Smaller body size under warming is not due to gill-oxygen limitation in a cold-water salmonid.

Declining body size in fishes and other aquatic ectotherms associated with anthropogenic climate warming has significant implications for future fisheries yields, stock assessments and aquatic ecosystem stability. One proposed mechanism seeking to explain such body-size reductions, known as the gill oxygen limitation (GOL) hypothesis, has recently been used to model future impacts of climate warming on fisheries but has not been robustly empirically tested. We used brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis), a fast-growing, cold-water salmonid species of broad economic, conservation and ecological value, to examine the GOL hypothesis in a long-term experiment quantifying effects of temperature on growth, resting metabolic rate (RMR), maximum metabolic rate (MMR) and gill surface area (GSA).

Identifying mechanisms underlying individual body size increases in a changing, highly seasonal environment: The growing trout of West brook.

As air temperature increases, it has been suggested that smaller individual body size may be a general response to climate warming. However, for ectotherms inhabiting cold, highly seasonal environments, warming temperatures may increase the scope for growth and result in larger body size. In a long-term study of individual brook trout Salvelinus fontinalis and brown trout Salmo trutta inhabiting a small stream network, individual lengths increased over the course of 15 years.

Keeping things local: Subpopulation and in a stream network with partial barriers to fish migration.

For organisms with overlapping generations that occur in metapopulations, uncertainty remains regarding the spatiotemporal scale of inference of estimates of the effective number of breeders (N^b) and whether these estimates can be used to predict generational . We conducted a series of tests of the spatiotemporal scale of inference of estimates of in nine consecutive cohorts within a long-term study of brook trout (). We also tested a recently developed approach to estimate generational from N^b and compared this to an alternative approach for estimating N^e that also accounts for age structure.

A hierarchical model of daily stream temperature using air-water temperature synchronization, autocorrelation, and time lags.

Water temperature is a primary driver of stream ecosystems and commonly forms the basis of stream classifications. Robust models of stream temperature are critical as the climate changes, but estimating daily stream temperature poses several important challenges. We developed a statistical model that accounts for many challenges that can make stream temperature estimation difficult.

Effective number of breeders provides a link between interannual variation in stream flow and individual reproductive contribution in a stream salmonid.

The effective number of breeders that give rise to a cohort (N(b)) is a promising metric for genetic monitoring of species with overlapping generations; however, more work is needed to understand factors that contribute to variation in this measure in natural populations. We tested hypotheses related to interannual variation in N(b) in two long-term studies of brook trout populations. We found no supporting evidence for our initial hypothesis that N^(b) reflects N^(c) (defined as the number of adults in a population at the time of reproduction).

Robust estimates of environmental effects on population vital rates: an integrated capture-recapture model of seasonal brook trout growth, survival and movement in a stream network.

Modelling the effects of environmental change on populations is a key challenge for ecologists, particularly as the pace of change increases. Currently, modelling efforts are limited by difficulties in establishing robust relationships between environmental drivers and population responses. We developed an integrated capture-recapture state-space model to estimate the effects of two key environmental drivers (stream flow and temperature) on demographic rates (body growth, movement and survival) using a long-term (11 years), high-resolution (individually tagged, sampled seasonally) data set of brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) from four sites in a stream network.

Population response to habitat fragmentation in a stream-dwelling brook trout population.

Fragmentation can strongly influence population persistence and expression of life-history strategies in spatially-structured populations. In this study, we directly estimated size-specific dispersal, growth, and survival of stream-dwelling brook trout in a stream network with connected and naturally-isolated tributaries. We used multiple-generation, individual-based data to develop and parameterize a size-class and location-based population projection model, allowing us to test effects of fragmentation on population dynamics at local (i.