The habitat concept, which defines the place where organisms live, is composed by abiotic and biotic conditions and differs for examples between species or activities. The habitat selection is the process where organisms choose the habitat to live in function of all habitats available around them. This habitat selection depends on an individual choice related to the organism, for example its behavior and a common choice related to organisms sharing common traits as individuals from the same species. Specific habitat selection models are developed to understand and represent this common choice and used to build ecological flow tools.

For freshwater fish (Figure 1), most of specific habitat selection models have low transferability between reaches and rivers. Indeed, they are built from abundance data and sampled in the same study reach during few numbers of surveys. In order to improve predictive quality of models, I developed an attractive modelling approach, both multi-reach and multi-survey, involving the non-linear response of habitat selection and abundance data overdispersion. Then, despite the high individual variability of habitat selection, I showed, from telemetry data, the relevance of developing specific habitat selection models. Finally, as the habitat selection is also depending on processes which influence community structures at the landscape scale (e.g. dispersal), I demonstrate the benefits of sampling methods such as snorkeling to characterize community structures and their longitudinal distributions at a large spatial scale. These techniques will allow studying the influence of landscape processes on habitat selection models.

Funding

100 % Irstea – AFB

Publications

• Plichard L., Forcellini M., Le Coarer Y., Capra H., Carrel G., Ecochard R. and Lamouroux N. Predictive models of fish microhabitat selection in multiple sites accounting for abundance overdispersion. (soumis, Freshwater Biology, 04/2019)
• Capra, H., Plichard, L., Bergé, J., Pella, H., Ovidio, M., McNeil, E., Lamouroux, N., 2017. Fish habitat selection in a large hydropeaking river: Strong individual and temporal variations revealed by telemetry. Sci. Total Environ. 578, 109–120. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.10.155
• Plichard, L., Capra, H., Mons, R., Pella, H., Lamouroux, N., 2017. Comparing electrofishing and snorkelling for characterizing fish assemblages over time and space. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 74, 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2015-0578

Cite the thesis

Laura Plichard. Modélisation multi-échelles de la sélection de l’habitat hydraulique des poissons de rivière. Ecosystèmes. Université de Lyon, 2018. Français. ⟨NNT : 2018LYSE1284⟩. ⟨tel-02463834⟩

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