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Predictors Of Fish Assemblage Structure And Dynamics In Atlantic Coastal Plain Streams, Rebecca Scott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Effective management of freshwater fishes requires a mechanistic understanding of the drivers of assemblage composition; in other words, what determines who is where and when. Stream fish assemblages are potentially influenced by environmental factors that act on multiple spatiotemporal scales, but the relative influence of these drivers may vary between geophysically distinct regions. This study sought to determine the patterns and drivers of fish taxonomic and functional assemblage composition in the coastal plain, a region possessing unique hydrologies, faunas, and physiochemical conditions. I addressed this goal using two complementary chapters, both of which utilized environmental and biotic data collected from …