Data and code from: Thermal niche and habitat use by co-occurring lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) and brook trout (S. fontinalis) in stratified lakes

Realized thermal niche and habitat use are two conceptualizations of fish
habitat based on organismal performance or lake-specific ecology,
respectively. Both habitat types were compared for lake trout (Salvelinus
namaycush) and brook trout (S. fontinalis) co-occurring in four large
(> 500 ha) oligotrophic lakes. Lakes were partitioned into two
morphological categories based on possession of a central or non-central
deep basin with corresponding differences in adjoining shelf areas. Lake
asymmetry in basin location has been shown to strongly influence food web
connections based on isolation of basins from shelf areas. Generally,
overlap between both habitat types occurred in several comparisons with
lake trout, suggesting that thermal habitat is a reasonable proxy for
habitat use boundaries though not a full replacement for insights gained
from habitat use models. For brook trout, overlap was not as consistent,
especially for lakes with non-central basins. In central basin lakes,
there were closer proximity between the two species and overlap in both
thermal niche and habitat use models. There was very limited overlap of
either habitat type in lakes with non-central basins. Further, there were
no shared areas of interspecific overlap between thermal niche and habitat
use in non-central basins pointing to additional complexity governing
habitat partitioning between lake trout and brook trout in these types of
lakes. The shelf area effect on spatial structure of habitat, and likely
food web connections, can occur in lakes regardless of basin centrality so
long as shelf areas are large. In this lake set, lakes were sufficiently
large to observe this phenomenon.