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Factors Influencing Ecological Metrics of Thermal Response in North American Freshwater Fish

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Factors Influencing Ecological Metrics of Thermal Response in North American Freshwater Fish Factors influencing ecological metrics of thermal response in North American freshwater fish By Sarah Hasnain A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master's of Science Graduate Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Toronto © Copyright by Sarah Hasnain (2012) Factors influencing ecological metrics of thermal response in North American freshwater fish Sarah Hasnain Master’s of Science Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Toronto 2012 Abstract Habitat temperature is a major determinant of performance and activity in fish. I examined the relationships between thermal response metrics describing growth (optimal growth temperature [OGT] and final temperature preferendum [FTP]), survival (upper incipient lethal temperature [UILT] and critical thermal maximum [CTMax]), and reproduction (optimum spawning [OS] and optimum egg development temperature [OE]) for 173 North American freshwater fish species. All metrics were highly correlated and associated with thermal preference class, reproductive guild and spawning season. Controlling for phylogeny resulted in an overall decrease in correlation strength, varying with metric pair relationship. ANCOVA and Bayesian hierarchical models were utilized to assess the influence of phylogeny on metric pair relationships. For both methods, FTP based metric pairs were weakly correlated within taxonomic family. Strong within family associations were found for reproduction metrics OS- OE. These results suggest that evolutionary history plays an important role in determining species thermal response to their environment. ii Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisors Prof. Brian Shuter (official) and Prof. Ken Minns (unofficial) for their support, guidance and assistance for the duration of my work at the University of Toronto. I would also like to thank Ken for giving me the opportunity to intern for him after my undergraduate degree and encouraging me to pursue my graduate studies and Brian for fostering my interest in thermal ecology research. I couldn’t have asked for better mentors. I would like to thank my supervisory committee, Dr. Michael Escobar and Dr. Don Jackson for their continued interest and assistance in my research. I would especially like to thank Michael for not only introducing me to Bayesian statistics and making it an enjoyable experience, but also all his help in conceptualising and constructing models for my thesis. I am greatly in his debt. I would like to thank Don for all of his helpful statistical discussions and guidance in general. My lab members (also friends) have played an instrumental role in the development of my thesis and I would like to thank Liset Cruz-Font, Dak de Kerckhove, Henrique Giacomini, and Jordan Pleet for all of their patience and help. I would like to thank Caroline Tucker for all of her assistance with phylogenetic comparisons and modelling in R. Dr. Helen Rodd, Dr. Nick Collin (EEB1310 was very helpful), and Dr. Ben Gilbert (statistical models) played an important role in the development of my thesis and I appreciate all of their guidance. I would also like to thank my fellow postdocs, Jaewoo Kim (conceptual support), Hawthorne Beyer (Bayesian models), and Karen Alofs (support with TAing) for all of their help. My thanks to fellow graduate students and friends, Robert Williamson, Emily Josephs, Aaron Hall, Caren Scott, Dorina Szurockzi, Bradley Murphy, Jun Cheng, Lifei Wang, Natalie Jones, Alex De Serrano, Deepthi Rajagopalan, Alivia Dey, Pasan Dissayanke, Rachel Germain, Kyle Turner, and Adam Cembrowski for an enjoyable experience at the EEB department. I would especially like to thank Anna Li and Lina Arcila-Hernandez for their emotional support and editing assistance. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family for their encouragement and support, especially my mother whose hard work and perseverance has helped me achieve my goals. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................iii List of Tables............................................................................................................................... v List of Figures................................................................................................................................ vi List of Appendices ........................................................................................................................ vii Chapter 1: Ecological thermal response metrics of North American freshwater fish ................... 1 1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 1 2. Methods................................................................................................................................. 3 2.1 Data Collection............................................................................................................... 3 2.2 Statistical Analysis......................................................................................................... 5 3. Results................................................................................................................................... 6 4. Discussion............................................................................................................................. 7 References ................................................................................................................................. 11 Tables......................................................................................................................................... 16 Figures ....................................................................................................................................... 18 Chapter 2: Application of Frequentist and Bayesian Statistical Approaches to Assess the Influence on Phylogeny on Thermal Response Metrics ............................................................... 23 1. Introduction......................................................................................................................... 23 2. Methods............................................................................................................................... 24 2.1 Thermal response metrics............................................................................................. 24 2.2 Frequentist Analyses .................................................................................................... 25 2.3 Bayesian hierarchical models....................................................................................... 25 2.4 MCMC Chains ............................................................................................................. 26 3. Results................................................................................................................................. 27 4. Discussion.............................................................................................................................. 28 References ................................................................................................................................. 33 Tables......................................................................................................................................... 41 Figures ....................................................................................................................................... 43 Appendices.................................................................................................................................... 50 iv List of Tables Chapter 1 Table 1.1: List of thermal response metrics for growth, survival and reproduction assessed .... 16 Table 1.2: Sample sizes for statistical analyses employed to assess thermal response metrics of growth, survival and reproduction. ........................................................................................ 16 Table 1.3: Summary statistics for growth, survival, and reproduction metrics for North American freshwater fish........................................................................................................................ 16 Table 1.4: Mean, minimum, and maximum temperature (°C) values for the growth, survival, and reproduction metrics for taxonomic families (n>5, data available across all metrics). ......... 17 Chapter 2 Table 2.1: Whole model ANCOVA statistics for the relationships between thermal metrics FTP- OGT, FTP-UILT, FTP-OS, and OS-OE ............................................................................... 41 Table 2.2: Summary statistics for ANCOVA for thermal metric pairs FTP-OGT, FTP-UILT, FTP-OS and OS-OE with factor taxonomic family.. ........................................................... 41 Table 2.3: βs and DIC values for Bayesian hierarchical models for thermal metric pairs FTP- OGT, FTP-UILT, FTP-OS and OS-OE. ............................................................................... 42 Table 2.4: Slope estimates generated using ANCOVA and Bayesian hierarchical models for thermal metric pairs FTP-OGT, FTP-UILT, FTP-OS, and OS-OE..................................... 42 v List of Figures Chapter 1 Figure 1.1: Scatterplot matrix showing relationships among growth, survival, and reproduction metrics .................................................................................................................................
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