The sex issue Doug brought up would be an interesting metric. For instance it would be a good bet that the E. caeruleum lining up in the flow regime on one side is primarily breeding males. Which implies a spring/early summer sampling. Looks a lot like the pattern I see in Swamp Creek. The pie chart may not be an ideal representation of species distribution, but it is an idea representation of the sampling data used to obtain it. Hence I think changing it to something more intuitive risks implying things the raw data doesn't actually represent. I always hate it when I have to try to intuit the raw collection data from some smear averaging of it just to get some notion of the raw data set being used. I would rather test out different smear averaging assumptions in my head than to not have a good idea of the actual data set because some form of averaging has already been presumptively supplied. I would leave it as is.

Todd, I did not know of the newest details outside of this data set, but I'm joyfully curious to hear that you're a) bringing this into a mesocosm and b) looking at this within the context of a 'natural experiment' where species are being reintroduced after decades of being absent. I think the third case of species jumping major drainage divides makes that pretty close to looking at all sides of the coin as you can. In situ enclosures within the Pigeon, or at least some type of open population experiment (VIE marked fish) with replicates several home ranges apart would be very interesting. I don't know if you need to go to the point of manipulating habitat as you will likely, or could select, find localities with different macro and micro availabilities. What's the level of flow regulation on these streams you have collected data from?

At least visually, the Little seemed like a mini Hiwassee to me, without the regulation. Darter fauna fairly similar except for a few rarer species too.

I'm sure it is site/system dependent, but I certainly saw quite a bit of difference between abundance and species detection with backpack (into seine) vs. snorkel especially with Percina spp. Literature certainly seems to indicate that rare/low density species can be found more readily visually. I had at least one false negative for P. tanasi while backpack shocking in the Little River. Both methods showed some within site variance monthly too, but that was more likely related to a species trait than an Etheostomatini trait. My biggest concern was always with repeat captures from fish that just were dumped and went downstream and into the next haul. I knew fairly well we were missing quite a few from time to time. Shuffling fish away, or 'keeping track' of them underwater seemed much easier.

Interesting that you didn't see any zonale, they certainly have dispersed down the basin. Our most darter rich Susq. tributaries are almost 50% not native, and likely minus one.

As for my community data, I'm not sure it would stand the rigors of publication, at least quantitatively.

Need a research associate?

I am trying to circle back to this, I apologize for the dead air. But this is all still in mind and I will get to answering and better yet, expanding the topic. My 4 introductions are almost done, and that's the part that kills me

But yeah Matt, if we just happen to luck out and score our NSF proposal (looooong shot), we're going to need PhD students, and I will present you with one heck of a conundrum

Todd

Good luck, and still interested in hearing more

Hmmmm.... I am using courtship strategies as a way of generating community hypotheses, perhaps I should consider egg deposition as well. Looking forward to reading this.

Todd

Todd, sorry for dragging this from another thread, but I sure hope you'll be bringing this stuff into the discussion on this thread as I've been tumbling some questions around in my mind on just this matter regarding this discussion.