Short- and Longer-term Effects of a Hurricane on Subtropical Estuarine Fishes

飓风等自然干扰对生态群落有重大影响。 干扰会影响存在的物种和个体数量，以及这些物种在系统中出现的位置。 辨别自然干扰如何影响生态群落的一个主要障碍是大多数研究缺乏干扰前的数据。 扰动前的数据是与扰动后的数据进行比较以确定扰动影响的基础。 由于干扰往往是不可预测的，因此当研究被干扰打断时，对干扰的研究就会机会性地发生（从而提供干扰前和干扰后的数据）。 尽管飓风在温暖的纬度地区相对频繁，但其发生的时间和空间是不可预测的。 因此，对其影响的研究相对较少。与自然干扰相比，人为干扰往往会产生不同的生态影响。 这在一定程度上是因为人为影响通常是永久性的（例如，海堤取代了海滩）或长期的（营养物添加到河口），而许多自然干扰是离散事件。 关于人为干扰如何影响生态群落从自然干扰中恢复的能力几乎一无所知。 在 2004 年 8 月查理飓风直接袭击之前的 19 个月内，对佛罗里达州夏洛特港受人为干扰的河口小溪和自然河口小溪中的鱼类进行了采样。飓风后采样将为估计飓风对经济和生态上重要的河口鱼类的影响提供必要的数据。 此外，这项研究还将比较河口鱼类如何从人为干扰和自然溪流中的飓风中恢复，并对所得数据的分析将应用于教育、保护和资源管理。

Natural disturbances, such as hurricanes, have major influences on ecological communities. Disturbances influence which species, and how many individuals, are present, and where these species occur within the system. A major impediment to discerning how natural disturbances influence ecological communities is that most studies lack pre-disturbance data. Pre-disturbance data are essential as a basis for comparison with post-disturbance data to determine a disturbance's effect. Because disturbances tend to be unpredictable, studies of disturbances occur opportunistically when research is interrupted by a disturbance (thus providing pre- and post-disturbance data). Although hurricanes are relatively frequent in warm latitudes, their occurrence in time and space are unpredictable. Thus, studies of their effects are relatively rare.In contrast to natural disturbances, anthropogenic disturbances tend to have different ecological effects. This is, in part, because anthropogenic effects are often permanent (e.g., a seawall replaces a beach) or long-term (nutrients added to an estuary), while many natural disturbances are discrete events. Almost nothing is known about how anthropogenic disturbances impact the ability of ecological communities to recover from natural disturbances. Fishes in anthropogenically-disturbed and natural estuarine creeks of Charlotte Harbor, Florida were sampled for 19 months before a direct hit by Hurricane Charley in August 2004. Post-hurricane sampling will provide data necessary for estimates of hurricane impacts on economically and ecologically important estuarine fishes. In addition, this study will compare how estuarine fishes recover from a hurricane in anthropogenically-disturbed and in natural creeks, and the analysis of the resulting data will have applications to education, conservation, and resource management.