Changes in the Spatial Distribution of Fishes in Lakes Along a Residential Development Gradient

As the human demand for freshwater natural resources such as fish and drinking water increases, we may rely more heavily on models to predict the response of aquatic ecosystems to natural and anthropogenic disturbance. Theses models in turn implicitly depend on the underlying spatial distribution of organisms. In terrestrial ecosystems, increased natural resource utilization has transformed habitat and changed the spatial distribution of organisms, with subsequent negative effects on biota. Recent studies in lakes demonstrate that human development of lakeshores alters the physical habitat and nutrient cycles. The impact of such disturbance by humans on the spatial distribution of aquatic organisms, however, remains unknown. Here we quantify the effect of lakeshore development on the spatial distribution of fishes in 23 lakes in the US Pacific Northwest. We found a significant decrease in the spatial aggregation of fishes with increased shoreline development by humans, reflecting a loss of refugia and resource heterogeneity that favors aggregation among fishes. We also found that lakes with a high perimeter–surface-area ratio and a relatively shallow littoral zone had much higher levels of fish aggregation, suggesting the importance of terrestrial inputs to lakes. Finally, we found a marginally significant decrease in fish spatial aggregation with increased total phosphorus concentration, but no effect of chlorophyll concentration, water transparency, the predator–prey ratio, or number of species on fish spatial distributions. These results suggest that anthropogenic modification of shorelines is significantly altering the spatial distribution of important aquatic organisms, and that these changes may have important implications for predictive modeling of ecosystem dynamics.