Contribution of native and non‐native species to fish communities in French reservoirs

Abstract

AbstractPrevious studies showed that only 20% of the variability in fish community structure in French reservoirs could be explained by site characteristics. In addition, no relationship was found between the relative abundance of species and stocking effort. Therefore, deliberate or uncontrolled introductions are likely to be the source of a great part of the observed communities. The objective of this study was to assess the importance of species introductions in French reservoirs. Fifty‐one reservoirs were sampled to obtain species presence/absence data. Local native (LNaR) and non‐native (LNNR) species richness were negatively correlated. LNaR was strongly correlated to the lake surface area, depth and catchment area, whereas LNNR was independent of environmental variables. Furthermore, LNaR was positively correlated to regional native richness. Conversely, local total richness was independent of regional total richness, but was related to the reservoirs’ environmental characteristics. It was hypothesised that the native fish communities in French reservoirs are unsaturated and species introductions lead to saturated communities.