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Survival and Density of a Dominant Fish Species Across a Gradient of Urbanization in North Carolina Tidal Creeks

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Abstract

Development in the southeastern US coastal plain generates the need for a better understanding of how survival and abundance of estuarine nekton respond to urbanization. Apparent survival and density of the dominant Atlantic coast salt marsh fish, the mummichog Fundulus heteroclitus, were estimated in four North Carolina tidal creeks using a model simultaneously fitted to mark-resight and mark-recapture data. Rates of weekly loss (mortality plus emigration) were high (~ 10%). Sampling for tagged fish within and outside of study creeks showed high site fidelity to each creek, indicating that loss largely resulted from mortality rather than emigration. Estimated rates of apparent survival were lowest in the creek with the least instream- and watershed-level impacts. This creek has direct (non-culvert) access downstream to a larger waterbody, suggesting that enhanced access by predators and/or greater rates of permanent emigration may have contributed to lower apparent survival in this creek. There was a positive relation between minnow trap catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) and density allowing the relationship between CPUE and habitat and urbanization to be examined in a total of six creeks. The largest CPUE estimates occurred early in each growing season and were associated with creeks possessing characteristics most representative of undisturbed salt marsh mosaics: high percentage of marsh coverage instream and downstream and high percentage of marsh edge. Given generally limited movement outside of creeks, differences in abundance among creeks likely result from different levels of recruitment that are related to salt marsh availability. Priority preservation of salt marsh habitats may be warranted by natural resource planners to maintain abundance levels of this trophically important species.

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Acknowledgments

We thank M.A. Dueker, J.H. Merrell, and S.J. Poland for their help in collecting and compiling fish and habitat data as well as computations of watershed imperviousness. C. Pelletier, K. Moore, and C. Hoffman helped collect movement and fidelity data. This article was greatly improved by the comments of three anonymous reviewers as well as reviews by B. Mosher and J.M. Carter (US Geological Survey). K. Pollock made valuable suggestions and contributions to the overall model.

Funding

This work was funded by North Carolina Sea Grant Award # R/10-HCE-1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Ecology, Center for Marine Science and Technology, North Carolina State University, 303 College Circle, Morehead City, NC, 28557, USA

    P. J. Rudershausen & J. A. Buckel

  2. Department of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7617, Raleigh, NC, 27695-7617, USA

    J. E. Hightower

  3. U.S. Geological Survey, Leetown Science Center, S.O. Conte Anadromous Fish Research Center, One Migratory Way, Turners Falls, MA, 01376, USA

    M. J. O’Donnell, T. Dubreuil & B. H. Letcher

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  1. P. J. Rudershausen
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Appendices

Appendix 1

Model code fitted through Bayesian inference in R and JAGS softwares used to simultaneously fit three sub-models within a Bayesian framework to study Fundulus heteroclitus in tidal creeks in coastal North Carolina. The three sub-models were as follows: (a) a hierarchical formulation of the Cormack-Jolly-Seber (CJS) model to estimate apparent survival (“phi”) and detection probability (“p”), (b) an ad hoc formulation of the Lincoln-Petersen (LP) method to estimate abundance (\( \hat{N_i} \)) and density, and (c) two different models (linear model and asymptotic model) for examining the relation between minnow trap catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) and density.

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Appendix 2

Table 8 Monthly numbers of recaptured PIT-tagged Fundulus heteroclitus (mi) and total numbers captured (ni) during minnow trap and cast net recapture sampling in four salt marsh creeks in coastal North Carolina from spring through fall, 2011–2013. The monthly value for ni reflects a reduction in the raw monthly ni value due to increases in mean size of PIT-tagged fish in each creek (see the “Methods” section)
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Rudershausen, P.J., Hightower, J.E., Buckel, J.A. et al. Survival and Density of a Dominant Fish Species Across a Gradient of Urbanization in North Carolina Tidal Creeks. Estuaries and Coasts 42, 1632–1653 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-019-00575-5

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