Community Responses of Larval and Juvenile Fishes to Created Shallow-Water Habitats in the Missouri River

Anthropogenic alteration of aquatic habitat has greatly reduced and homogenized habitat, especially for larval and juvenile fishes. Creation of shallow-water habitats has been used as a restoration technique in response to altered conditions in several studies but has only recently been attempted in the United States.  In the summer of 2012, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sampled for larval and juvenile fishes at six paired sites (main stem and created shallow-water) along a stretch of the Missouri River between Kansas City and St. Louis.  From those samples, we enumerated and identified a total of 11,038 fishes representing 12 families.  Community responses of fishes to created shallow-water habitats were assessed by comparisons of species richness and diversity measures between paired sites.  Shannon entropy measures were transformed and γ diversity (total diversity) was partitioned into two components, α (within community) and β (between community) diversity using a multiplicative decomposition method.  Percent similarity measures, along with Mantel test results suggest site location along a longitudinal gradient as a driver of larval/juvenile community structure.  Paired t-test results indicate little to no differences in community turnover between habitat types.