Habitat characteristics and fish assemblage structure of deep pools in the Upper Tombigbee River, Mississippi.

摘要

Fish assemblage structure in lotic environments is a product of interactions between the habitat and the biota, but little is known about how deep pool habitat conditions affect distributional patterns of fish occupying them in larger warmwater streams. This study describes relationships between the habitat and the fish assemblages in deep pools of the Upper Tombigbee River, Mississippi. Pools exhibited an increase in size from headwaters to mouth. The change in the structure of fish assemblages was related significantly to increases in pool size while independent of time or other environmental conditions. A small amount of the variation in structure of fish assemblages in deep pools was accounted for by the measured environmental variables. This suggests other factors such as biotic interactions play an additional role in the forming the observed distributional patterns in fishes occupying deep pools.