5/25/2016  |   15:30 - 15:45   |  307

FISHERIES ACTIONS TO RESPOND TO CALIFORNIA'S PROLONGED DROUGHT Since 2004, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has undertaken a suite of actions across the State and its many aquatic ecoregions to address the ecological stresses of the State's 4-, soon to be 5-year drought. These actions include environmental stressor monitoring of creeks and rivers statewide, fish relocation and rescue, emergency captive rearing of most-affected populations, hatchery facility retrofits, focused instream restoration projects, water conservation projects, local organization support/planning, application of innovative, cutting-edge, and realtime monitoring techniques to monitoring fish and water condition, and focal research on key fish species [smelt, salmon, sturgeon], and collaboration stream flow studies. This presentation will describe the Department's efforts, key knowledge and accomplishments to-date, ongoing efforts [extensive monitoring], intended future actions, and implications from a changing climate.

Kevin Shaffer (Primary Presenter/Author), California department of fish and wildlife, kevin.shaffer@wildlife.ca.gov;


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5/25/2016  |   15:45 - 16:00   |  307

THE INTERACTION AND IMPLICATIONS OF FINE SEDIMENT DEPOSITION AND INVASIVE CRAYFISH PREDATION ON THE AMPHIPOD GAMMARUS PULEX The spread of invasive taxa is occurring rapidly across the globe with range expansions often occurring in association with other stressors such as sedimentation. Signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus), one of the most widespread invasive species in Europe, are instrumental in modifying benthic invertebrate assemblages. However, the implications of signal crayfish invasion may extend beyond changes to the biotic communities and into the channel morphology and sediment transport processes within the rivers they inhabit. Specifically, their direct effects on instream ecology may be augmented by indirect effects via their role in modifying fine sediment dynamics. Results from ex-situ mesocosm studies demonstrate that crayfish are significant geomorphic agents and that fine sediment ingress rates were significantly enhanced in their presence. Modifications to substratum composition limited the ability of the amphipod Gammarus pulex to evade crayfish predation through vertical avoidance behaviour. The results demonstrate that sedimentation of riverine habitats may result in benthic taxa being more vulnerable to predation and that as invading species become established the implications for lotic communities may be enhanced via their biogeomorphic activity.

Kate Mathers (Primary Presenter/Author), Loughborough University, k.mathers@lboro.ac.uk;


Stephen Rice ( Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Manchester Metropolitan University, s.rice@lboro.ac.uk;


Paul Wood ( Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Loughborough University, UK, p.j.wood@lboro.ac.uk;


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5/25/2016  |   16:00 - 16:15   |  307

USING IN SITU BACTERIAL COMMUNITIES TO MONITOR CONTAMINANTS IN RIVER SEDIMENTS In situ bacterial communities could provide a useful tool for monitoring and assessing ecological stressors in freshwater sediments. This study was conducted to investigate the structure of in situ sediment bacterial communities in Nanfei River and to examine the correlation among different taxonomic components and the key pollutant stressors. The concentration profiles of chemical pollutants varied among different land use regions. The bacterial communities were dominated by Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Chloroflexi as assessed by 16S rRNA amplicon pyrosequencing. Sediments from different land use regions contained distinct bacterial community structures and bacterial communities dwelling in the industrial region had relatively low alpha diversity. There were significant associations between bacterial community phylogenies and the anthropogenic contaminants in the sediments. Nutrients (TN and TP) and two measured metals (Cd and Zn) were negatively correlated with the essential core of the bacterial interaction network (?-proteobacteria and ?-proteobacteria).Furthermore, several sensitive candidate genera were identified as potential bio-indictors to monitor contaminants by species- pollutant correlation analysis.

Yuwei Xie (Primary Presenter/Author), Nanjing University, xieyuwei111@163.com;


Xiaowei Zhang ( Co-Presenter/Co-Author), Nanjing University, zhangxw@nju.edu.cn;


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