Sponsor
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Macrosystems Award to P.L. Zarnetske (NSF MSB-NES #1926567), S. Record (NSF MSB-NES #2242804 and Hatch project award no. USDA NIFA #MEO-022425 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture), B. Baiser (NSF MSB-NES #1926569) and A. Strecker (NSF MSB-NES #1926610).
Published In
Journal of Animal Ecology
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-19-2025
Subjects
Fish biodiversity -- contiguous United States, Fish conservation
Abstract
Intraspecific trait variation (ITV) is an increasingly important aspect of biodiversity and can provide a more complete perspective on how abiotic and biotic processes affect individuals, species' niches and ultimately community-level structure than traditional uses of trait means. Body size serves as a proxy for a suite of traits that govern species' niches. Distributions of co-occurring species body sizes can inform niche overlap, relate to species richness and uncover mechanistic drivers of diversity. We leveraged individual-level body size (length) in freshwater fishes and environmental data from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) for 17 lakes and streams in the contiguous United States to explore how abiotic and biotic factors influence fish species richness and trait distributions of body size. We calculated key abiotic (climate, productivity, land use) and biotic (phylogenetic diversity, trait diversity, community-level overlap of trait probability densities) variables for each site to test hypotheses about drivers of ITV in body size and fish diversity. Abiotic variables were consistently important in explaining variation in fish body size and species richness across sites. In particular, productivity (as chlorophyll) was a key variable in explaining variation in body size trait richness, evenness and divergence, as well as species richness. This study yields new insights into continental-scale patterns of freshwater fishes, possible only by leveraging the paired high frequency, in situ abiotic data and individual-level traits collected by NEON.
Rights
Copyright (c) 2025 The Authors Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1111/1365-2656.70014
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/43184
Citation Details
McGrew, A., Gantz, C., Wills, B., Baiser, B., Record, S., Zarnetske, P. L., & Strecker, A. L. (2025). Abiotic variables drive different aspects of fish community trait variation and species richness across the continental United States. Journal of Animal Ecology. Portico.