The following schedule is from the 72nd Annual Conference of the Southeastern Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies which was held October 21-24, 2018 in Mobile, Alabama.
AUTHORS: Chelsea Myles-McBurney, Jason O'Connor, John Knight – Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
ABSTRACT: Saltmarsh Topminnows Fundulus jenkinsi are listed as a species of special concern in Florida and are candidates for federal listing. They occupy brackish tidal marshes along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida. Within Florida they only occur along the coast in the extreme northwest portion of the state. The Saltmarsh Topminnow Action Plan was created to guide conservation and research efforts within the state with the goal of improving the status of the species to the point that it could be delisted. Efforts to implement the plan began in August 2014. Our objectives were to (1) Develop a multi-season site occupancy model that incorporates habitat covariates to determine population trends for the Saltmarsh Topminnows, (2) Determine the extent of occurrence of Saltmarsh Topminnows across the Escambia, Perdido and Blackwater Bays. Twenty-eight randomly selected sites were surveyed 7 times between Mar 2016 and Mar 2017 from all available saltmarsh habitat within Perdido, Escambia, and Blackwater Bays. Assuming constant detection and occupancy across sites, there was a 70% probability that a patch of saltmarsh habitat within the sampling habitat was occupied by Saltmarsh Topminnows. The survey method used was estimated to detect Saltmarsh Topminnows at sites of known occupancy on 67% of surveys. The top ranked occupancy model included a quadratic effect of site salinity on occupancy probability. Additional sampling is needed to calculate more precise parameter estimates, which will be used to construct more complex occupancy models.
