Synopsis
In Spring Creek, an Ozark tributary of the Neosho River in northeast Oklahoma, seven cyprinid species were more specialized by diets than by microhabitats. Patterns of ecological specialization and generalization appeared correlated with longitudinal stream position, as upstream individuals of two numerically dominant generalist species were more likely to be misclassified by descriptive discriminant analysis than were downstream individuals. This result suggests that interspecific niche overlap is greater upstream than in more downstream locations. Since upstream locations of Ozark streams are generally less stable environmentally than downstream reaches, these results are further interpreted to mean that environmental stability and resource partitioning interact in structuring the Spring Creek cyprinid assemblage.
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McNeely, D.L. Niche relations within an Ozark stream cyprinid assemblage. Environ Biol Fish 18, 195–208 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00000359
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00000359