Fish assemblage recovery and persistence

Abstract –  Fish assemblages from a historical (1968) pre‐impoundment survey of the Bear Creek system (Tennessee River drainage) were compared with fish assemblages from recent collections to examine spatial recovery in stream fish assemblages. A positive relationship was present for species richness and distance from impoundment for recent collections but was not significant for historic collections from the same sites with distance superimposed from the impoundments. A positive relationship was also present for similarity and distance using Jaccard's Index and the Morisita Similarity Index. Recent fish assemblages were dissimilar to historical collections immediately below impoundments, but were increasingly similar at 10–20 km. The results suggest that recovery patterns for stream fish assemblages are present downstream for some types of impoundments and that remnants of the stream community persist downstream from existing impoundments.