2022 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Virtual Conference

March 13 - 15, 2022

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5/21/2018  |   2:15 PM - 2:30 PM   |  AQUATIC MACROINVERTEBRATE SIZE-SPECTRA IN SALMON-BEARING STREAMS   |  321

AQUATIC MACROINVERTEBRATE SIZE-SPECTRA IN SALMON-BEARING STREAMS

Pacific salmon are known to mediate energy transfer across the marine-freshwater boundary. The dual-role of spawning salmon in freshwater ecosystems — nutrient enrichment from carcasses and substrate disturbance from spawning behavior — has been investigated in numerous studies of stream invertebrates. A size-based alternative to the traditional taxonomic approach, using community size spectra, offers a complimentary, visually-intuitive, and ecologically-meaningful way to evaluate how aquatic macroinvertebrate communities respond to spawning salmon. We sampled benthic biota and abiotic parameters from 15 streams along the central coast of British Columbia throughout three consecutive time periods: in the summer prior to, during, and in the spring following peak salmon abundance. In a subset of the 15 streams, aquatic macroinvertebrates were additionally collected upstream of a salmon migration barrier as a within-stream comparison. Individual insect biomass was calculated using published length-weight regressions to produce size-spectra for the communities. Preliminary results show a unimodal distribution across body size classes in community size spectra. This study suggests that a size-based perspective of community dynamics will improve our understanding of the functional roles of spawning salmon in stream ecosystems.

  • Fish
  • Subsidy
  • Disturbance

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Presenters/Authors

Ryan Walquist (), Simon Fraser University, rwalquis@sfu.ca;


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