Electrofishing Distance Needed to Estimate Fish Species Richness in Raftable Oregon Rivers

Abstract One critical issue surrounding river biomonitoring is the minimum amount of sampling distance required to adequately represent the fish assemblage of a reach. Determining adequate sampling distance is important because it affects the estimates of fish assemblage integrity and diversity at the local and regional scales. We sought to answer the sampling distance question by sampling 45 raftable Oregon river reaches for an entire day and then assessing the minimum effort needed to collect 95% of the species obtained in 75% of the reaches sampled. We also resampled 10 reaches to estimate the measurement and sampling period errors. Fish were collected by means of an electrofishing raft, and physical and chemical habitats were sampled to aid in data interpretation. The collected numbers of species were typically only 0–3 species fewer than those predicted for true species richness by simulated species accumulation curves and nonparametric models. We concluded that a sampling distance equal to 85 times ...

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