Evidence of a Shift in the Littoral Fish Community of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

ABSTRACT: Many estuarine and freshwater ecosystems worldwide have undergone substantial changes due to multiple anthropogenic stressors. Over the past two decades, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) in California, USA, saw a severe decline in pelagic fishes, a shift in zooplankton community composition, and a rapid expansion of invasive aquatic vegetation. To evaluate whether major changes have also occurred in the littoral fish community, we analyzed a beach seine survey dataset collected from 1995 to 2015 from 26 sites within the Delta. We examined changes in the Delta fish community at three different ecological scales (species, community, and biomass), using clustering analyses, trend tests, and change-point analyses. We found that the annual catch per effort for many introduced species an

SUBMITTER: Mahardja B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5261730 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature