Abstract
Understanding swimming performance of native freshwater fishes has implications for ecology, conservation, and management. In particular, this type of information has practical importance for improving the understanding of fish dispersal, occurrence, migration, and invasive potential. The objective of this study was to characterize swimming performance of 2 taxa from the comparatively understudied minnow family (Cyprinidae) and test for potential drivers as a function of total length, sex, habitat, morphology, or some combination. The study assessed Spotfin Shiner (Cyprinella spiloptera; n = 66) and Bluntnose Minnow (Pimephales notatus; n = 24) populations from an ontogenic range of male and female individuals from lentic and lotic habitats in Indiana and Ohio. Akaike information criterion (AIC) model selection identified the most parsimonious linear regression model to predict swimming performance of Spotfin Shiner and Bluntnose Minnow independently. Overall, larger Spotfin Shiners were superior swimmers compared with smaller individuals. In both species, individuals having more streamlined heads and elongated caudal regions were better swimmers. Additionally, Spotfin Shiners that were collected from lotic environments were generally better swimmers than individuals from lentic environments. Models did not recover sex-specific effects in either species—or meaningful total length, or habitat effects, in Bluntnose Minnows. Overall, this study provides evidence of a complex series of swimming performance covariates when assessing or understanding performance. This has implications for aquatic population, assemblage, and community ecology as well as management and conservation efforts.
Highlights
Alterations to flow regimes are almost ubiquitous globally (Poff et al 1997)
There was a trend towards higher swimming performance for Spotfin Shiners from the lotic environment and males compared to the lentic environment and females (Fig. 3C and D)
This study provides evidence that (1) swimming performance of Spotfin Shiners could be explained by total length, morphology, and habitat; but (2) the only larger trend observed in Bluntnose Minnows related to morphology
Summary
Alterations to flow regimes are almost ubiquitous globally (Poff et al 1997). Dams constitute the most obvious and recognizable form of these alterations; while dams do act as barriers at any scale, numbers of dams pale in comparison to oftenoverlooked flow alterations caused by stream crossings (e.g., culverts; Tchir et al 2004; Goerig et al 2016). Estimates place the number of dams in the United States at 90,580 with the number of culverts at over 1.4 million (National Inventory of Dams database 2016; Infrastructure Report Card: Dams 2017; Pess et al 2005) This alteration of habitat has been linked to changing assemblages, environmental shifts, and species extirpation (Foster and Keller 2011). The most commonly used metric or protocol is critical swimming speed (Ucrit), which estimates prolonged swimming performance using an incremental step-wise increase in water velocity until subject exhaustion (Brett 1964).
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