PiSCES

PiSCES predicts fish assemblages and estimates community abundance and biomass across stream reaches in the conterminous United States using species-specific occurrence models and distributional data for over 1,000 native and non-native freshwater fish species.

Key Features:

• HUC8-Based Estimation: Uses Hydrologic Unit Code 8 (HUC8) regions to hypothesize fish community composition for individual stream reaches.
• Species-Specific Occurrence Models: Incorporates species-specific occurrence models that filter potential assemblages based on likelihood of presence given ecological and environmental variables.
• Community Abundance/Biomass Distribution: Generates distributions of community abundance and biomass by correlating relative species abundance with mean body weight data.
• Ancillary Species Characteristics: Maintains species-level attributes such as habitat preferences and maximum size for ecological interpretation.
• Database Integration: Integrates distributional and ecological data from NatureServe, the US Geological Survey (USGS), StreamCat, and the Peterson Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes of North America.
• Dynamic Database Querying: Supports querying of the aggregated database to explore ecological parameters and alternative community scenarios.

Scientific Applications:

• Biodiversity Assessment: Predicts fish community composition to assess biodiversity patterns across stream habitats.
• Conservation Planning: Identifies species occurrences and community structure relevant to habitat restoration and species-at-risk assessments.
• Environmental Impact Studies: Evaluates potential impacts of environmental change or anthropogenic activities on stream fish communities.

Methodology:

Aggregates species occurrence and ecological data from NatureServe, USGS, StreamCat, and the Peterson Field Guide; applies statistical occurrence models and HUC8-based prediction to estimate community composition; correlates relative species abundance with mean body weight to produce abundance and biomass distributions; and enables dynamic querying of the aggregated database.