Among- and within-tributary responses of riverine fish assemblages to habitat featuresContribution of the Group for Interuniversity Research in Limnology (GRIL). We dedicate this paper to the memory of our colleague Réjean Fortin.

Abstract

We quantified fish abundance and environmental variables at 170 sites distributed among 11 tributaries of the Ottawa River, Quebec, Canada, to assess the relative importance of among- and within-tributary variation in riverine fish assemblages. Additionally, we determined (i) which environmental variables were most strongly associated with each type of variation and (ii) whether ecomorphological traits in fish assemblages were predictably related to environmental gradients. Partitioning of variation by means of partial ordination indicated that assemblages were less variable among (38.7% of the total variation) than within (61.3%) tributaries. Water transparency singly accounted for 33.3% of the variation among tributaries, whereas macrophyte cover and river width jointly accounted for 8.3% of the variation within tributaries. These results suggests that differences in habitat features among tributaries may account for a substantial fraction of the predictable variation in assemblage structure at the watershed scale, an aspect not emphasized in previous studies of riverine fish assemblages. Mixed regression analyses relating ecomorphological traits to environmental variables showed that the environmental variables most strongly associated with assemblage structure were significantly related to traits associated with predator avoidance or foraging efficiency.