Download or read book Sampling Adequacy of Freshwater Mussel Surveys and Variation of Mussel Species Richness in Illinois Wadeable Streams written by Jian Huang and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freshwater mussels are one of the most imperiled groups of animals in North America. Effective conservation strategies and resource management of freshwater mussels require adequately characterizing local mussel assemblages. However, sampling protocols for mussel surveys, including sampling efforts, have not been well established and tested. Furthermore, the percentage of all species captured with a standard sampling effort (e.g., search of man-hours) may vary greatly among sites, introducing biases into our understanding of species-diversity patterns and temporal trends. In addressing both questions, I focused on time-based search, one commonly used sampling technique in stream mussel surveys in the present study. I sampled 18 wadeable-stream sites mainly in east-central Illinois, selected based on watershed size, dominant-substrate type, and historic species diversity. With 16 man-hour search per site, my sampling crew collected 27-942 individuals and 5-18 species per site. I estimated the total species richness at a site with Chao-1 method that accounted for imperfect species detectability. I measured sampling adequacy at a given effort as the % of all estimated species recorded. A frequently used effort, 4 man-hour search, captured 15-100% of all species with an average of 61%. Observed species richness was not significantly correlated with the estimated total richness until sampling effort reached 8 man-hours (Pearson0́9s r = 0.59, p