DOI: 10.5061/dryad.vx0k6djtx
title: Long-term minnow community data from the Bayou Pierre, Mississippi

description: Long-term community monitoring is becoming an important tool for
 ecological studies. Historical data are present in a variety of sources
 but often require considerable effort to extract, filter, and verify prior
 to analyses. In this dataset we document minnow (sensu lato, Cyprinidae +
 Leuciscidae) communities in the Bayou Pierre, Mississippi. We include
 filtered community data from twelve localities and three time periods
 (1974-75, 1985-89, 2019-20) derived from a mixture of literature, museum
 collections, and contemporary collecting efforts. All collections were
 made using comparable methodologies. We also include an additional 29
 contemporary collections which do not have historical representation but
 which cover the majority of the watershed. We further include a trait
 database coded from literature values which captures both reproductive and
 ecological traits for the species in these data. These data were used in
 preparation of a manuscript examining long-term taxonomic, ecological, and
 functional change within the minnows in the Bayou Pierre, and they are
 part of a broader research effort to study the effects of fluvial
 geomorphic evolution on aquatic ecosystems.
description: Fish community data were collected by single-pass seining (3mm
 mesh) all available stream habitats in a 100-300m reach at 12 historic
 localities (sites 1 - 12 in these data) in 1974/75, 1985-89, and 2019-20.
 A further 29 sites were sampled using the same methodology in 2019-20
 (sites 13-41 in these data). Historic samples were initially identified
 through queries of museum data at the University of Southern Mississippi
 and literature searches. For museum data, we examined field notes for
 evidence of fishes released in the field. We excluded museum samples which
 contained &lt; 3 taxonomic families or &lt; 6 species, or which
 made references to sampling methods other than seining. This filtering was
 conducted due to a known sampling effort occurring the 1980s and 1990s
 which used a different sampling methodology targeting the endemic Bayou
 Darter, and which were known to not be full community datasets (Ross et
 al., 2001a). Samples from 1974/1975 were collected as part of an MS thesis
 project (Matthews, 1978). Specimens for this effort were largely not
 deposited in museum samples, and only total sums of individuals by species
 and sample locality were reported. The fish data we deposit here has been
 similarly summed by species and locality within a time period to provide
 data comparability. The manuscript which utilizes these data focused on
 minnows (Cyprinidae + Leuciscidae), and this dataset has been filtered to
 those species. Fish trait data were collected by
 queries of regional literature, particularly Ross et al. (2001b), Boschung
 and Mayden (2004), Frimpong and Angermeier (2009), Gidmark and Simmons
 (2014), and Robison and Buchanan (2020). Where species were deficient of
 data, we substituted data from the closest possible relative.
   References 
 Matthews, William H. 1978. Fishes of Bayou Pierre, Southwest
 Mississippi. Master's Thesis, Northeast Louisiana University, Monroe,
 LA. 123pp. Ross, S. T., M. T. O'Connell, D. M.
 Patrick, C. A. Latorre, W. T. Slack, J. G. Knight, and D. S. Wilkins.
 2001. Stream erosion and densities of <em>Etheostoma
 rubrum</em> and associated riffle-inhabiting fishes: biotic
 stability in a variable habitat. Copeia, 4:916-927.
 Ross, S. T., W. M. Brenneman, W. T. Slack, M. T. O'Connell,
 and T. L. Peterson. 2021. Inland Fishes of Mississippi. University of
 Mississippi Press, Jackson, MS. 624pp. Boschung, H.
 T., and R. L. Mayden. 2004. Fishes of Alabama. Smithsonian Books,
 Washington, DC. 736pp. Frimpong, E. A., and P. L.
 Angermeier. 2009. FishTraits: A database of ecological and life-history
 traits of freshwater fishes of the United States. Fisheries,
 34:487-495. Gidmark, N. J., and A. M. Simmons. 2014.
 Cyprinidae: Carps and Minnows. (in) eds. Warren, M. L., and B. M. Burr.
 Freshwater Fishes of North America, Petromyzontidae to Catostomidae. John
 Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD. pp 354-450.
 Robison, H. W., and T. M. Buchanan. 2020. Fishes of Arkansas.
 University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, AR. 959 pp.
description: Site numbering is consistent in all sampling time periods (i.e.,
 site 1 is the same locality in all three contemporary to recent data, and
 in the full contemporary data). Latitutes and longitudes for collection
 localities are given in the full contemporary data. Nearly all specimens
 from the 1985-89 and 2019-20 sampling efforts have been deposited at the
 University of Southern Mississippi's Ichthyological Collections
 (excluding individuals too large to fit into a field sample
 jar). The twelve historic to contemporary sample
 localities represent sampling effort overlap in the three time periods.
 Both the original sources for the 1974-75 and 1985-89 data contain other
 records which did not meet our criteria, or which represented nonmatching
 site localities with one another.