Fish Assemblage Responses to Forest Cover

We investigated whether fish assemblage structure in southern Appalachian streams differed with historical and contemporary forest cover. We compared fish assemblages in 2nd–4th order streams draining watersheds that had increased forest cover between 1950 and 1993 (i.e., reforesting watersheds). We sampled fish in 50 m reaches during August 2001 and calculated catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) by taxonomic, distributional, trophic, reproductive, and thermal metrics. We assigned streams to reforestation categories based on cluster analysis of years 1950 and 1993 near-stream forest cover. The relationship between forest cover and assemblage structure was assessed using analysis of variance to identify differences in fish CPUE in five forest cover categories. Streams contained 23 fish species representing six families, and taxa richness ranged from 1 to 13 at 30 stream sites. Streams with relatively low near-stream forest cover were different from streams having moderate to high near-stream forest cover in 1950 and 1993. Fish assemblages in streams having the lowest amount of forest cover (53–75%) were characterized by higher cosmopolitan, brood hider, detritivore/herbivore, intermediate habitat breadths, run-pool dweller, and warm water tolerant fish CPUE compared to streams with higher riparian forest cover. Our results suggest that fish assemblage’s structural and functional diversity and/or richness may be lower in streams having lower recent or past riparian forest cover compared to assemblages in streams having a high degree of near-stream forest cover.