Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - 11:15 AM
145

Associations between Benthicity and other Traits in North American Freshwater Fishes: Implications for Predicting Species Imperilment

Emmanuel Frimpong, Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 and Paul L. Angermeier, U.S. Geological Survey, Virginia Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 100 Cheatham Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061.

Benthicity is often associated with imperilment among freshwater fishes. We test the hypotheses that a) there are traits widely associated with benthicity among North American fishes and b) fishes sharing these traits are disproportionately imperiled. Our analyses will inform large-scale assessments of vulnerability for fishes and watersheds. We are analyzing traits of 480 species in the USGS’s NAWQA database for the United States to investigate a) associations between benthicity and other traits and b) differences between 51 species recognized as imperiled by the American Fisheries Society and the remaining 429 species. Our analyses, based on 47 trait-states, show that nearly 87% of species feed at least partly in or near the substrate and 66% depend directly on substrate for reproduction. Furthermore, imperiled species are distinctive from others in their tendencies to feed exclusively in bottom substrates (59% versus 39%), to be simple lithophilic spawners (22% versus 10%), and do not serial-spawn (78% versus 63%). We are exploring the entire suite of traits and their relations to imperilment with multivariate techniques, and will discuss how knowledge of these relations might enhance conservation by facilitating predictions of species imperilment or watershed vulnerability due to anthropogenic impacts.