Multispecies conservation of freshwater fish assemblages in response to climate change in the southeastern United States

Aim: Streamflow and water temperature are primary variables influencing the distribution of freshwater taxa. Climate-induced changes in these variables are already causing shifts in species distributions, with continued changes projected in the coming decades. The Mobile River Basin (MRB), located in the southeastern United States, contains some of the highest levels of temperate freshwater biodiversity in North America. We integrated species distribution data with contemporary and future streamflow and water temperature data as well as other physical habitat data to characterize occurrence probabilities of fish species in the MRB with the goal of identifying current and future areas of high conservation value. Location: Mobile River Basin, southeastern United States Methods: We used a maximum entropy approach to estimate baseline and future occurrence probability distributions for 88 fish species in the MRB based on model-generated streamflow and water temperature as well as geologic...