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Fish composition, but not richness or abundance, differ among Phragmites, Typha, and Schoenoplectus zones during a high-water year

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Abstract

Phragmites australis (ssp australis) is an aggressive colony-forming species that displaces emergent vegetation in North America, including native bulrushes (Schoenoplectus sp.) and both native and invasive cattails (Typha sp.). Phragmites expansion can alter habitat and negatively affect reptiles, amphibians, and birds; less is known about Phragmites’ utility as fish habitat and its impact on fish communities in freshwater coastal wetlands. To assess fish use of Phragmites in summer, we compared habitat characteristics, water quality, and fish community composition, diversity, and abundance among stands of flooded Phragmites, Typha, and Schoenoplectus at 16 sites across four regions of the Laurentian Great Lakes. Despite marked differences in water quality (higher pH and morning dissolved oxygen in Schoenoplectus) and habitat characteristics (higher stem density in Phragmites), there were no significant differences in fish species richness or catch per unit effort among vegetation types; there was a distinct fish assemblage in Schoenoplectus (more Cyprinids) compared to both Phragmites and Typha (more Centrarchids). This suggests that expansion of Phragmites or Typha at the expense of Schoenoplectus may alter wetland fish assemblages; however, with no clear differences in other fish community metrics, flooded Phragmites may provide habitat for some fishes during the summer, in the study wetlands.

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Data availability

Data are available on reasonable request. Due to the presence of species at risk, the location data are sensitive and cannot be released publicly.

Code availability

The majority of the data analysis was conducted using JMP 13.2.1 (SAS institute). NMDS was done in R. NMDS ordination was conducted using the “Vegan” package in R version 3.6.1. The R code is available on request.

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge support from the Walpole Island Heritage Center (Kennon Johnson, Heather Johnson, Tom Tooshkenig, Walden Shipman, Kyle Gilbert-Day, Naomi Williams and Carl Smith), Great Lakes Laboratory for Fishes and Aquatic Science personnel (Kyle Mataya), and Federal Student Work Experience Program students (Emily Marshall, Sydney Wilkinson, Abby Wynia). We also appreciate the input from two anonymous reviewers who helped improve the manuscript. Funding was provided by the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Aquatic Invasive Species program

Funding

Funding was provided by the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Aquatic Invasive Species program. All authors certify that they have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript. The authors have no financial or proprietary interests in any material discussed in this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Ontario and Prairie Region, Great Lakes Laboratory for Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 867 Lakeshore Road, Burlington, ON, Canada

    M. V. Croft-White, E. Budgell, S. E. Doka, D. T. Reddick, J. Gardner Costa & J. D. Midwood

  2. Walpole Island First Nation, 2185 River Road North, Walpole Island, R.R. 3, Wallaceburg, ON, N8A 4K9, Canada

    C. Jacobs

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  1. M. V. Croft-White
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Contributions

JM, DR, CJ, and SD contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and methods section preparation were performed by EB and DR. Data analyses were performed by Melanie Croft-White. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Melanie Croft-White and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to M. V. Croft-White.

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This scientific research meets all Canadian ethics and animal care regulations. A permit was not required to collect, identify, and release fish species. A species at risk permit was required, and obtained, since species at risk are found in the study locations. All authors of this scientific research followed the ethical rules stated in the submission guidelines, according to COPE. Data were analyzed with honesty and integrity. All data and text are the author’s own original work.

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Supplementary file1 (DOCX 215 KB)

S1: Hourly variability in dissolved oxygen (DO) and temperature for each logger is presented for each vegetation type. (N= 11 Phragmites, 10 Schoenoplectus, and 10 Typha loggers). The variance was calculated as the difference between the recorded DO value at each time interval and the daily mean DO associated with that value. Positive variances indicate DO readings that are higher than the daily mean and negative values those that are lower than the daily mean. Shaded area indicates night. Nets were set between 1000 and 1400 and retrieved the following day between 1200 and 1600 (approximately) for a total of 22-24hrs, so nets set for less than 24 hrs were missing some data between 10:00-16:00hrs.

Supplementary file2 (DOCX 16 KB)

S2: The CPUE (fish/hr) for each of the four regions is broken up by fish species and vegetation type.

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Croft-White, M.V., Budgell, E., Jacobs, C. et al. Fish composition, but not richness or abundance, differ among Phragmites, Typha, and Schoenoplectus zones during a high-water year. Hydrobiologia 848, 4945–4963 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-021-04687-7

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