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A novel multivariate ecological approach to modeling freshwater mussel habitats verified by ground truthing

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Abstract

Our study incorporates high-resolution, multivariate ecological niche modeling (ENM) to test whether two putative state-threatened mussel species in East Texas (Fusconaia askewi and F. lananensis) are ecologically differentiated. We forecasted suitable habitat to identify any differences in the taxa’s habitat associations, using a total of 60 environmental layers comprising climate, soil, and hydrology in a multivariate framework. We found the two species were not ecologically different, consistent with other work (e.g., morphology and genetics) suggesting that they are synonymous. We synonymized the two to make an ENM that was then ground truthed by sampling 25 novel sites throughout East Texas. Our ENM significantly distinguished suitable from unsuitable habitat for these sites, identifying five new records. We compared model evaluation metrics using the original data versus the ground-truthed data, and we found that some metrics were more reliable than others. The verified ecological niche modeling approach that we present here can be applied in other studies in riverine environments and has particular relevance to conservation science.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Neil Ford, Samantha Rowe, and Emmanuel Gutierrez from UT-Tyler for their invaluable help with mussel surveys and Neil Ford for lending his specimen identification expertise. We would also like to thank Alyssa Blanton and Megan Seawright for their help with the GIS work. We appreciate the meaningful comments and critiques of this manuscript shared by Susan Geda at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Emily Chou from the Wildlife Conservation Society. This work was funded by RFP No. 207c from the Natural Resources division of the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.

Funding

This study was funded by the Comptroller of the State of Texas (RFP No. 207c for Endangered Species Research).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biology Department and Institute for Great Lakes Research, Central Michigan University, 1200 South Franklin Street, Mount Pleasant, MI, 48859, USA

    Ava M. Laszlo

  2. Trinity Valley Community College, 100 Cardinal Dr., Athens, TX, 75751, USA

    John S. Placyk Jr.

  3. Department of Biology and Center for Environment, Biodiversity, and Conservation, University of Texas at Tyler, 3900 University Blvd., Tyler, TX, 75799, USA

    Lance R. Williams, Marsha G. Williams & Joshua A. Banta

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Contributions

AL performed field work, conducted data analyses, prepared figures and tables, and wrote the manuscript. JB was the Principal Investigator on the grant proposal that funded this work, and in this capacity, he led all aspects of the project and served as AL’s academic advisor. He wrote the proposal that funded this work, performed analyses, and wrote the manuscript and the final grant report. JP, LW, and MW were co-Principal Investigators on the grant proposal. JP contributed to writing the proposal. LW contributed to the study design and the statistical analyses.

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Correspondence to Joshua A. Banta.

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Laszlo, A.M., Placyk, J.S., Williams, L.R. et al. A novel multivariate ecological approach to modeling freshwater mussel habitats verified by ground truthing. Hydrobiologia 849, 3117–3133 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-022-04913-w

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