Poster Details
FISH COMMUNITY DIVERSITY AND ABUNDANCE ACROSS AN URBANIZATION GRADIENT
The diversity and abundance of organisms in an ecosystem may confer community stability, drive ecosystem function, or determine the strength of consumer-driven nutrient dynamics. Urbanization reduces the abundance and diversity of organisms. However, species vary in their response to urban stressors, and some species may even benefit, such as by release from inter- or intra-specific competition. Therefore, any ecosystem-level effect of urbanization depends on changes in the composition and abundance of member species. We investigated the effect of impervious surface cover on the diversity and abundance of stream fishes across 28 stream sites surrounding Athens, GA from 2015-2017. We estimated the “true” number of species present and their abundance at each site as a function of surrounding impervious surface land cover, while accounting for imperfect detection as a function of species identity using Bayesian n-mixture models. Results show how urbanization differentially affects diversity and abundance of fishes in these systems, and may be extended to estimate emergent ecosystem-level consequences.
Greg Jacobs (Primary Presenter/Author), Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, greg.jacobs25@uga.edu;
Phillip Bumpers (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), University of Georgia, bumpersp@gmail.com;
Seth Wenger (Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, swenger@uga.edu;