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Habitat variation influences movement rates and population structure of an intertidal fish

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Abstract

Understanding how variation in habitat characteristics influences the demography and behavior of organisms is of primary interest in ecological research. I studied how patterns of distribution, abundance, mortality and movement of the fluffy sculpin, Oligocottus snyderi, are related to variation in habitat characteristics within and between sites. The recruitment levels of O. snyderi are very similar at two different intertidal sites, yet post-recruitment processes modify the original recruitment signal at only one of the two sites. The two sites differ significantly in only one measured aspect of their tidepool habitat—the amount of cover provided by surfgrass or algae. Both recruits and adults of O. snyderi exhibit positive associations with the amount of tidepool cover, particularly the presence of surfgrass. A mark-recapture study determined that these differences in the habitat characteristics between the two sites are associated with differences in post-recruitment movement rates. In fact, the absence of a correlation at one site between O. snyderi recruit and adult abundances, which would typically be considered evidence for significant post-recruitment mortality, appears to be driven by strong within-site post-recruitment movement. Furthermore, although post-recruitment mortality rates do not vary significantly across the two sites, variation in post-recruitment mortality is weakly related to within-site variation in tidepool characteristics at one site. The results of this study suggest that post-settlement intertidal fishes continue to sample their surrounding environment as they mature and will redistribute themselves according to within-site spatial variation in habitat characteristics—a behavioral process that may obscure estimates of post-settlement mortality.

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Acknowledgements

I thank M. Carr, D. Doak, C. Syms, P. Raimondi, J. Clobert, and A. Chaine for comments on this manuscript and help with statistical and demographic analyses. I also thank numerous UCSC senior thesis and independent study students and volunteers who assisted with the field research. This work was supported by the Project for Interdisciplinary Studies of the Coastal Oceans (PISCO) funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, University of California Office of the President, Center for Dynamics of the Land Sea Interface (UCSC), Myers Oceanographic Trust, and Friends of Long Marine Laboratory (UCSC). This is contribution #298 from PISCO. The experiments in this manuscript comply with the current laws of California and the USA.

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  1. Amy F. Ritter

    Present address: Station d’Ecologie Experimentale du CNRS a Moulis, 09200, Saint Girons, France

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  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Amy F. Ritter

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Correspondence to Amy F. Ritter.

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Communicated by Michael Keough.

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Ritter, A.F. Habitat variation influences movement rates and population structure of an intertidal fish. Oecologia 157, 429–439 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-008-1086-y

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