Shannon K. Brewer

Fish-habitat associations in streams have been widely studied; however, temporal considerations have been neglected, particularly during the winter. We quantitatively sampled perennial headwater streams in the Missouri Ozarks during the summer (n = 13) and winter (n = 4) to evaluate possible habitat shifts by three benthic fishes at two spatial scales: channel unit and microhabitat. Density of all three headwater species in streams was generally lower in winter than summer, with some species being ubiquitous in channel units of streams during the summer and almost entirely absent from...

Developing and recommending protective flows for stream fishes requires precise information on how fishes use their habitat. Collections to establish fish-habitat relations are typically conducted during daylight hours, but because of diel habitat shifts exhibited by many warmwater stream fishes, we were concerned that determining protective flows only from day collections would result in recommended flows that were not protective. We tested for diel differences in habitat selection by stream fishes and evaluated the effects of these differences on simulated usable habitat area as flows...