Víztudományi és Vízbiztonsági Nemzeti Laboratórium(RRF-2.3.1-22-2022-00008) Támogató:
NKFIH
Szakterületek:
Biológiai tudományok
Mezőgazdaság, erdészet, halászat
This study aimed to explore the relative importance of mesohabitat and microhabitat
features, as well as the spatial and within-day temporal covariates, on the body size-related
within-reach spatial distribution of stream-dwelling fishes in a highland-type and
a sub-mountainous-type stream in Central Europe. During daytime, point abundance sampling
was applied to catch the fish, and environmental data were recorded at the sampling
points (microhabitat features) and along the transects that crossed the sampling points
(mesohabitat features). Variance partitioning revealed similar patterns in the size-classified
fish data for the two streams. Microhabitat features had a greater explained variance
than mesohabitat features. The majority of the mesohabitat influence emerged as variance
shared with the microhabitat influence. The pure spatially explained variance proportion
was lower than the variance explained purely by the environmental features (meso and
micro together), and no temporally explained variance was found. Many species showed
body size-related environmental associations. The results suggest that the different-scale
habitat features act in a hierarchical way on the within-reach fish distribution.
Meso-scale features may determine a great proportion of the micro-scale habitat variability
and micro-scale conditions may directly affect how fish select places to stay as a
function of both species identity and body size. The restoration of meso-scale environmental
diversity can effectively contribute to the protection of size-structured populations
in sub-mountainous and highland streams.