Browsing by Subject "Habitat use"

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    Sport Fish Behavioral Responses to a Littoral Coarse Woody Habitat Addition in a North-temperate Lake
    (2021-05) Smith, Quinnlan
    The availability of suitable habitat throughout an ecosystem is important for the long-term sustainability of natural resources. Coarse woody habitat (CWH) littoral zone additions to north-temperate glacial lakes in the Midwestern United States have become popular to mitigate the effects of increased and intensified lakeshore residential development (LRD) and associated removals of natural CWH. Relatively few of these CWH additions have been treated as deliberate experiments regarding fish and aquatic ecosystem responses. Whole-lake CWH removal experiments have shown detrimental effects on fishes that use the habitat for foraging, refuge, and spawning. Whole-lake CWH additions that have been treated as deliberate experiments have shown increased availability and diversity of prey available to fishes as well as pronounced behavioral changes; however, many of these studies have only focused on singular behavioral responses in singular species and in simple fish communities. To address questions of multiple fish behavioral responses in a complex fish community to CWH addition, a long-term study was initiated on Sanford Lake, Vilas County, Wisconsin, where 160 trees were added to the littoral zone of the lake in summer 2018. I tested for behavioral responses in muskellunge (Esox masquinongy), smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu), and walleye (Sander vitreus) to this CWH addition. To test for behavioral responses to CWH addition, I used radio telemetry data to estimate home range changes, and passive integrated transponder (PIT) data along with radio telemetry data to estimate movement rates between habitats in muskellunge, smallmouth bass, and walleye during pre-manipulation (2017) and post-manipulation (2018 and 2019) time periods. Across species, home ranges and movement rates between habitats increased following the large-scale CWH addition. In the following chapters, I show that complex, species-specific behavioral responses to CWH addition can be expected, and should be taken into consideration before implementing littoral habitat enhancements in diverse fish communities.