Assessing the biological relevance of aquatic connectivity to stream fish communities

Abstract

Recent advances in the ability to quantify longitudinal connectivity of riverine systems is enabling a better understanding of how connectivity affects fish assemblages. However, the role of connectivity relative to other factors, such as land use, in structuring biological assemblages is just emerging. We assessed the relevance of a structural connectivity index to stream fish communities at a relatively large scale (across five watersheds of Lake Ontario) while controlling for confounding habitat variables, such as land use, elevation, and stream topology. The results were assessed to determine whether species’ sensitivities to connectivity are in accordance with expectations of life history. Our results indicated that at large scales, structural connectivity explains significant amounts of variation in community structure (1% to 5.4% as measured by Bray–Curtis similarity), but remains secondary to other habitat components. Connectivity also was significantly related to abundance in three of the seven species assessed. The lower explanatory power of our models compared with studies done at smaller scales suggests that the relevance of connectivity to fish communities is scale-dependent and diminishes relative to other environmental factors at larger spatial extents.