Community Analysis in Fishery Management: An Application with Northern Wisconsin Lakes

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Abstract
Decisions in fishery management usually are made on a species-by-species and site-by-site basis because most information about fishes has been collected and organized in this way. A comparative, community-level approach can contribute to the development of management strategies for large sets of lakes and fish assemblages. An approach similar in concept to lake classification, using techniques of multivariate community analysis (ordination, classification and multiple discriminant analysis) is described. This approach can reveal patterns among fish assemblages and relate them to the lakes'' habitat characteristics. An application of the approach is illustrated by a published study on fish assemblages of 18 small lakes in northern Wisconsin. Two discrete assemblage types were distingusihed and the factors believed to be responsible for their maintenance were identified. With relationships derived from those 18 lakes, predictions of the assemblage types of 11 additional lakes are made from only 5 habitat characteristics obtained from the literature. Analyses showed these predictions are largely successful. Multivariate community analysis contributes to an ability to understand, predict and manage fish assemblages.