Community Analysis in Fishery Management: An Application with Northern Wisconsin Lakes

Abstract

Decisions in fishery management usually are made on a species-by-species and site-by-site basis because most information about fishes has been collected and organized in this way. A comparative, community-level approach can contribute to the development of management strategies for large sets of lakes and fish assemblages. Here we describe an approach similar in concept to lake classification, using techniques of multivariate community analysis (ordination, classification, multiple discriminant analysis). This approach can reveal patterns among fish assemblages and relate them to the lakesˈ habitat characteristics. An application of the approach is illustrated by a published study on fish assemblages of 18 small lakes in northern Wisconsin. Two discrete assemblage types were distinguished and the factors believed to be responsible for their maintenance were identified. With relationships derived from those 18 lakes, predictions of the assemblage types of 11 additional lakes are made from only five habitat characteristics obtained from the literature. Analyses showed these predictions to be largely successful. We suggest that multivariate community analysis contributes to an ability to understand, predict, and manage fish assemblages. Received August 12, 1982 Accepted March 14, 1983