Sampling Little Fish in Big Rivers: Larval Fish Detection Probabilities in Two Lake Erie Tributaries and Implications for Sampling Effort and Abundance Indices

摘要: AbstractLarval fish are frequently sampled in coastal tributaries to determine factors affecting recruitment, evaluate spawning success, and estimate production from habitats. Imperfect detection of larvae is common, because larval small unevenly distributed space time, often large heterogeneous. We estimated probabilities several taxa the Maumee Detroit rivers, two largest Lake Erie. then demonstrated how accounting for imperfect influenced (1) probability observing as present relative sampling effort (2) abundance indices River species. found that ranged 0.09 0.91 but were always less than 1.0, indicating common among between systems. In general, with high fecundities, length at hatching, no nesting behaviors had highest detection...