Predicting New Zealand riverine fish reference assemblages
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science, Ecosystem Science, Freshwater Biology, Natural Resource Management, Environmental Impacts
- Keywords
- ecosystem health, fish barriers, observed/expected, nutrients, riparian, exotic fish, biomonitoring, New Zealand, Freshwater, fish community
- Copyright
- © 2018 Canning
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Predicting New Zealand riverine fish reference assemblages. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26479v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26479v1
Abstract
Biomonitoring is a common method to monitor environmental change in river ecosystems, a key advantage of biomonitoring over snap-shot physicochemical monitoring is that it provides a more stable, long-term. insight into change that is also effects-based. In New Zealand, the main biomonitoring method is a macroinvertebrate sensitivity scoring index, with little established methods available for biomonitoring of fish. This study models the contemporary distribution of common freshwater fish and then uses those models to predict freshwater fish assemblages for each river reach under reference conditions. Comparison of current fish assemblages with those predicted in reference conditions (as observed/expected ratios) may provide a suitable option for freshwater fish biomonitoring. Most of the fish communities throughout the central North Island and lower reaches show substantial deviation from the modelled reference community. Most of this deviation is explained by nutrient enrichment, followed by downstream barriers (i.e., dams) and loss of riparian vegetation. The presence of modelled introduced species had relatively little on the presence of the modelled native fish. The maps of observed/expected fish assemblage may provide a rapid way to identify potential restoration sites.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.