TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL PATTERNS OF FISH DISTRIBUTION AND

DIVERSITY IN THE NOXUBEE RIVER,

MISSISSIPPI AND

By

Michael Thomas Calloway

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Biological Sciences in the Department of Biological Sciences

Mississippi State, Mississippi

August 2010 TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL PATTERNS OF FISH DISTRIBUTION AND

DIVERSITY IN THE NOXUBEE RIVER,

MISSISSIPPI AND ALABAMA

By

Michael Thomas Calloway

Approved:

______Gary N. Ervin Christopher M. Taylor Associate Professor of Biological Associate Professor of Natural Sciences Resources Management Mississippi State University Texas Tech University (Director of Thesis and Graduate (Committee Member) Coordinator of the Department of Biological Sciences)

______Todd Tietjen Gary L. Myers Limnologist Dean of the College of Arts and Southern Nevada Water Authority Sciences (Committee Member) Mississippi State University

Name: Michael Thomas Calloway

Date of Degree: August 7, 2010

Institution: Mississippi State University

Major Field: Biological Sciences

Major Professor: Dr. Gary Ervin

Title of Study: TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL PATTERNS OF FISH DISTRIBUTION AND DIVERSITY IN THE NOXUBEE RIVER, MISSISSIPPI AND ALABAMA

Pages in Study: 69

Candidate for Degree of Master of Science

The Mobile Basin is a prime example of a system that has undergone extensive channel modification with corresponding declines in the distribution and abundance of the native aquatic fauna. However, many of the declining aquatic species of the Mobile basin may persist within unmodified subbasins. The Noxubee River is a subbasin of the

Mobile basin that has had very little alteration throughout its watershed. I investigated the species richness and assemblage structure to determine if the contemporary fish assemblage attributes resembled the conditions represented by historic collections. The findings of this study are important because the Noxubee River has not been extensively investigated since 1983, and the river could serve as refugia for declining riverine species of the Mobile basin. After examination at both local and regional levels, I determined that a diverse contemporary fish assemblage comprising 87 species, similar to historic collections, still persists in the Noxubee River system.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my committee for all of their support during my time at

Mississippi State University. I would especially like to thank Dr. Christopher Taylor for his guidance and patience as my thesis advisor. I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr. Gary Ervin for his support and guidance. Dr. Todd Tietjen and Dr. Ronald Altig provided me with valuable editing and commentary for which I am eternally grateful.

Dr. Todd Slack of the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science provided invaluable services in the acquisition of historical data and the identification of certain species. I would like to thank all of the faculty and staff of the Mississippi State University

Biological Sciences Department for their help through the years. I would like to thank the NSF REU program without which the dataset for this study would not exist. Dr.

Matthew Roberts and Daniel Millican deserve special recognition for their assistance in field collection, identification, and instruction on the use of different software packages.

James Hendrix was invaluable during data collection. James spent many days in the field with me collecting fishes. Dr. Jacob Walker provided assistance in the use of ArcGis to obtain land cover percentage data and in the collection of fishes. Beau Newsome,

Brandon Geisbrecht, Brad Permenter, and Ward McGee helped in the collection of fishes and in obtaining access perm