Abstract
BackgroundMovement information can improve conservation of imperiled species, yet movement is not quantified for many organisms in need of conservation. Prairie chub (Macrhybopsis australis) is a regionally endemic freshwater fish with unquantified movement ecology and currently considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act. The purpose of this study was to test competing ecological theories for prairie chub movement, including the colonization cycle hypothesis (CCH) that posits adults must make upstream movements to compensate for downstream drift at early life stages, and the restricted movement paradigm (RMP) that describes populations as heterogeneous mixes of mostly stationary and few mobile fish.MethodsWe tagged prairie chub with visible implant elastomer during the summer (May–August) of 2019 and 2020 to estimate net distance moved (m) and movement rate (m/d). We tested the hypotheses that observed prairie chub movement would be greater than expected under the RMP and that prairie chub movement would be biased in an upstream direction as predicted by the CCH.ResultsWe tagged 5771 prairie chub and recaptured 213 individuals across 2019 and 2020. The stationary and mobile components of the prairie chub population moved an order of magnitude further and faster than expected under the RMP during both years. However, we found only limited evidence of upstream bias in adult prairie chub movement as would be expected under the CCH.ConclusionsOur findings are partly inconsistent with the RMP and the CCH, and instead closely follow the drift paradox (DP), in which upstream populations persist despite presumed downstream drift during early life stages and in the apparent absence of upstream bias in recolonization. Previous mathematical solutions to the DP suggest organisms that experience drift maintain upstream populations through either minimization of drift periods such that small amounts of upstream movement are needed to counter the effects of advection or increasing dispersal regardless of directionality. We conclude that the resolution to the DP for prairie chub is an increase in total dispersal and our results provide insight into the spatial scales at which prairie chub conservation and management may need to operate to maintain broad-scale habitat connectivity.
Highlights
Movement information can improve conservation of imperiled species, yet movement is not quantified for many organisms in need of conservation
Knowledge of movement by organisms was historically underrepresented in environmental management decisions for nongame species until recently when applied movement ecology emerged as a research framework [2,3,4]
We employed a mark-recapture study at an unprecedented spatial extent and found that prairie chub movement was at least an order of magnitude greater than expected under the prevailing stream fish movement ecology paradigm
Summary
Movement information can improve conservation of imperiled species, yet movement is not quantified for many organisms in need of conservation. Allen and Singh [6] developed a five-step framework for integrating movement ecology into conservation planning, beginning with the measurement of movement attributes and extending to assessing organism effects on ecosystems, how this information can be incorporated into management, implementation of management actions, and evaluation of actions. This framework will provide beneficial information for animal conservation across taxa and ecosystems, it is needed for imperiled stream fishes [2]. There is a need to better understand the scales at which non-game or otherwise non-economically important stream fishes complete their life histories so that this information can be integrated into management and conservation actions [7]
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