The Rocky Glades is a threatened landscape in south Florida because of drainage and land conversion. It remains structurally intact in Everglades National Park. The short-hydroperiod wetland maintains a persistent fish community because the highly eroded karst offers dry-season refuges in solution holes that access groundwater. Fishes survive beneath the surface for months until rains re-flood the area, but the degree that local refuges (solution holes) versus distant refuges (sloughs and canals) contribute to providing recruits for recolonization is unclear. Past observations of directed mass movements of fish days after the Rocky Glades re-flooded supports a local-refuge hypothesis.

In the summer of 2000, we tested drift fence/funnel traps arrays, combined with visual surveys, to study fish dispersal, recruitment, and successional patterns. Fishes made mass directional movements on the surface in the wet season that appeared strongly related to water flow. The appearance of fishes in traps within a day of marsh flooding indicated presence of local refuges. Only adults were taken at re-flooding. These reproduced within days. The majority of the 24 fish species collected appeared during the first week of reflooding. Larger bodied species and non-native fishes appeared to immigrate later. The study will be expanded spatially in summer 2001. (Session p-32, Monday, July 9, Penn Stater, Deans Hall)

(This abstract was presented at the July 2001 Annual meeting of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.)

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