Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit, Great Plains CESU

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The USGS is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for research to use multivariate parametric models with existing Long Term Resource Monitoring element (LTRM) fisheries data to gain insight into fish habitat requirements across communities, with emphasis on associations with environmental covariates that are commonly manipulated through restoration projects (e.g., depth, velocity, temperature). The use of latent guild models allows us to evaluate abundance and distribution responses to environmental gradients across species, allowing inference on community-wide habitat requirements. By inferring guilds by seasonal sampling period from models, we can evaluate whether seasonal habitat associations align with hypotheses made based on life history guilds. Further, if model-based estimates of habitat associations do align with life history guilds, we can gain an understanding of life history attributes of poorly understood and possibly rarer species by borrowing information from similarly clustered, but well understood and more common species. Finally, by developing latent guild models for multiple study reaches, we can evaluate the variation in species-level responses and the diversity in fish community responses across reaches.

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