Relationships between life‐history strategies of European freshwater fish species and their habitat preferences

Abstract

1. Focusing on the current environmental characteristics, the 'habitat template' theory proposes that life-history strategies summarise how evolution has shaped species to cope with the temporal and spatial variability of their present environment. The hierarchical 'landscape filters' concept predicts that the distribution of species reflects their specific traits that allow them to pass through multiple habitat filters. Together, these theories showed the importance of identifying the functional relationships of species to selective habitat forces in order to predict the organisation and response of communities to the environment. 2. We test the relationships between life-history traits of European freshwater fish species' and their habitat preferences, to detect the strategies adopted by fish to cope with their current habitat. For this purpose, we use published data on species traits and habitat preferences (microhabitat hydraulics, temperature and oxygen level). We use multivariate analyses to classify fish species' strategies and test the relationships between strategies and habitat preferences. 3. We identified a continuum of life-history patterns between two extremes, with opportunistic and periodic species. Our study supports the idea that microhabitat hydraulics plays a more important role as a template for these species ecological strategies than temperature and oxygen level. Indeed, riffle habitats may select opportunistic species whereas weak relationships are found between species strategies and both their temperature and oxygen level preferences. In addition, the ratio between mortality and growth rate (dimensionless trait), reflecting a trade-off between growth and survival, varied among species according to the use of their hydraulic habitat, with species using deep habitats exhibiting the highest values. 4. These general relationships between hydraulics and traits may be of importance in community ecology to develop predictive models to understand how fish communities change with the hydraulic environment.

From forests to cattail: how does the riparian zone influence stream fish?

“…The abundance of herbaceous vegetation present in INT streams may also explain the dominance of large fish, since these structures may represent a protection against predation, mainly considering that large fish tend to be more susceptible to terrestrial predators (Power, 1984;Harvey & Stewart, 1991). Additionally, in accordance to the registers in other freshwater environments, microhabitat hydraulics plays a more important role as a template for species ecological strategies (Blanck et al, 2007) occurrence of large size fish in PRE streams, where fast flow stretches are more common, and in DEG streams, that have a greater portion of the habitat occupied by cattails, limiting fish maneuverability. Some studies show that, to protect aquatic biodiversity and assure the ecological processes in lotic environments, it is necessary to protect most of the river basins, since only the restoration of riparian zones close to the rivers is insufficient to improve the integrity of the whole system (Harding et al, 1998;Teels et al, 2006 andauthors therein, Lévêque et al, 2008).…”

Can biological invertebrate traits resolve effects of multiple stressors on running water ecosystems?

“…According to the Web of Science (July 2008), Southwood (1977) is the most cited article among c. 2800 others in the 'Journal of Animal Ecology ', Minshall (1988) is the eight-most and Poff (1997) is the fourth-most cited article among c. 1000 others in the 'Journal of the North American Benthological Society', and is the second-most cited article among c. 3300 others in 'Freshwater Biology'. Most of the citing articles assessed theoretical aspects of associations between habitat characteristics (typically using variables indicating disturbance or harshness) and easily measured or described biological traits of benthic stream invertebrates (Townsend, Scarsbrook & Dolédec, 1997b;Fü reder, 2007), interstitial stream invertebrates (Claret et al, 1999), stream fish (Mérigoux, Dolédec & Statzner, 2001;Blanck, Tedesco & Lamouroux, 2007),…”

Application of the physical habitat simulation for fish species to assess environmental flows in an Atlantic Forest Stream in South-eastern Brazil

“…Specialization in habitat use varies among fish species with some species found in almost all sites whereas others have preferences for very specific conditions, such as a particular type of substrate or narrow range of depth or velocity. The fish morphology is frequently interpreted as a series of physic attributes related to habitat use (Wood & Bain, 1995;Blanck et al, 2007;Leal et al, 2011). Moreover, fish size determines habitat selection (e.g.…”