A review of existing fish assemblage indicators and methodologies

Abstract

Fish assemblage indicators developed throughout the world were reviewed and key differences in methodologies depending on ecoregions, basins and contrasting fish fauna summarised. Common elements of existing Indices of Integrity were identified to support the development of a European-wide fish index. These include, using reference condition, accounting for natural fish assemblage variability, evaluating metric precision and selecting the most sensitive and complementary metrics. For future developments, it was recommended to pay more attention to temporal variability in fish assemblages, age structure of key (sentinel) species and fish migration. Testing hypotheses at different steps of the process seems to be the appropriate way to design fish indices.

Monitoring freshwater fish in Florida lakes using electrofishing: Lessons learned

“…Numerous studies have attempted to develop indices and multi metric indexes using fish to estimate biological integrity in both lentic and lotic systems with varying amounts of success (Karr et al 1986, Leonard and Orth 1986, Hickman and McDonough 1996, Schulz et al 1999. Factors affecting the elusiveness of integrity indexes are many (Diaz et al 2004, Roset et al 2007), but the one often ignored is the ability to accurately sample a community accounting for all species in the actual relative abundances (Krebs 1999).…”

Developing a Benthic Index of Biological Integrity and Some Relationships to Environmental Factors in the Subtropical Xiangxi River, China

“…Water quality may only partially reflect environmental impact (BOZZETTI and SCHULZ, 2004). Researchers increasingly include quantitative biological indicators (JOY and DEATH, 2004;ROSET et al, 2007). Biological indicators may reflect the intensity of anthropogenic stress and have been used as a tool in risk assessment and evaluation of human induced changes in freshwater ecosystem (KAMDEN-TOHAM and TEUGELS, 1999 …”

A Preliminary Fishery Quality Index for Portuguese Streams

“…Indices of biotic integrity (IBIs) are commonly used for assessing the ecological health or condition of entire fish assemblages in North America (Miller et al 1988;Simon and Lyons 1995) and internationally (Hughes and Oberdorff 1999;Roset et al 2007) because they combine multiple variables into a single number easily comprehended by fishery administrators and the public. Despite the popularity of the multimetric IBI approach, few fishery managers have adopted comparable explicit multimetric indices for assessing key game fish assemblages, although they may consider such information implicitly and for specific populations.…”