Abstract

Measuring the home range size of freshwater fishes provides crucial information on community structure, population dynamics, and conservation management. Earlier studies have shown that home range size increases with fish size, water body size, and trophic level, and that lake fishes have larger home ranges than stream fishes. However, in previous studies, there were sometimes conflicting findings, a lack of a standardized methodological approach, and some key variables that may influence home range were not considered. Using a systematic quantitative review of 272 studies, we revisited previous meta-analyses and evaluated the home range estimates in both lentic and lotic environments to verify whether home range: 1) increases with fish length, water body size, latitude, and study duration; 2) is influenced by trophic guild and data collection method; 3) decreases with the presence of dams; and 4) varies across fish family. Our results indicated that home range size was 4 times larger in lake than stream fishes and increased with fish length. However, home range size of lake fishes was mainly influenced by lake surface area and latitudinal gradient, not fish length. In streams, fish length, stream width, data collection method, and study duration all significantly influenced home range size. We also found significant fish family variation across lakes and streams when using the most robust available data from three families. These results demonstrate that the home range size of freshwater fishes was explained by different predictors in both lentic and lotic environments.