Comparison of Historical and Recent Fish Distribution Patterns in Oklahoma and Western Arkansas

Abstract

In the past century and a half, surface waters in the lower Great Plains have been impacted by numerous factors related to human settlement and development of the region including construction of reservoirs, which have been well documented to have negative effects on stream fish communities. In Oklahoma, by 1925 there were only seven artificial impoundments (of 36–970 hectares), but by 2007 there were 146 impoundments in the state lake registry ranging up to 42,000 hectares. Most were built from the 1930s to the 1970s. We examined historic and recent distribution patterns of fishes in Oklahoma and western Arkansas using data from 86 collections made by A. I. Ortenburger from 1925–1927 and from 381 collections we made from 1975–2009 in the same region, to ask if faunal changes were apparent following the era of dam construction. Although exact sites in the 1920s and in 1975–2009 were not identical, there were collections in 14 Hydrologic Units (HUCs as identified by eight-digit Hydrologic Unit Codes) in th...