The Fishes of Champaign County, Illinois, 

 as Affected by 60 Years of Stream Changes 



R. WELDON LARIMORE 

 PHILIP W. SMITH 



The fishes of Champaign County, 

 Illinois, have received probably as inten- 

 sive and prolonged study as those in any 

 area of equal size in the New World. 

 The long period of observation has fur- 

 nished an unusual opportunity to evalu- 

 ate the ecological changes that have oc- 

 curred in a highly developed agricultural 

 and urban region and to relate these 

 changes to the distribution and abundance 

 of stream fishes. 



In 1899 and several years before and 

 after, Stephen A. Forbes and Robert E. 

 Richardson made 48 collections of fishes in 



in the summer of 1959 and the spring of 

 1960. Our investigation was similar to 

 that of Thompson & Hunt, except that, in 

 order to obtain more standardized data, 

 we utilized techniques and refinements un- 

 known in 1928 and 1929. The present 

 paper is the result of the third survey. 



Throughout this study, emphasis has 

 been placed on changes — changes in the 

 county resulting from agricultural devel- 

 opment and population increase, changes 

 in the streams resulting from natural and 

 human modifications, changes in aquatic 

 habitats resulting from new developments 



Champaign County while gathering ma- in land use practices, and changes in the 



fishes as these adaptable animals adjusted 

 to new conditions in their naturally un- 

 stable aquatic environment. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



We gratefully acknowledge the assist- 

 ance of three former employees of the Illi- 

 nois Natural History Survey, David J. 

 McGinty, Richard E. Bass, and David W. 

 Bridges, and regret that we cannot share 

 authorship with them. All of them were 

 recognized species. Thompson & Hunt's active in the investigation during the en- 

 study was aimed at discerning distribu- tire field program and through much of 

 tional changes in fish. The use of stan- the data analysis. Throughout the sum- 

 dardized sampling methods and a sys- mer of 1959, they returned to the labora- 

 tematic approach to making collections tory each evening and helped sort, count, 

 enabled them to express results quantita- and measure collections, frequently of 

 tively (to include numbers and weights of such size that sorting continued until mid- 

 fish) as well as qualitatively (to include night. With _ equal willingness, they 

 only names of species) and permitted shared, or carried on in our absence, other 

 them to make a number of important gen- phases of the study ranging fromjiard 



terial for their study The Fishes of Illi- 

 nois (Forbes & Richardson 1908). Their 

 collections included approximately 65 spe- 

 cies. In 1928 and 1929, David H.' Thomp- 

 son and Francis D. Hunt made 132 

 Champaign County collections that in- 

 cluded approximately 75 species (Thomp- 

 son & Hunt 1930). The exact number 

 of species in these early studies is uncer- 

 tain because some of the reported species 

 were composites of two or more currently 



eralizations regarding the distribution and 

 abundance of fishes in small streams. 



A period of about 30 years elapsed be- 

 tween the study by Forbes & Richardson 

 and that by Thompson & Hunt. As a sec- 

 ond 30-year period drew to a close, a 

 unique opportunity to collect data that 

 could be compared with those of Forbes & 

 Richardson and Thompson & Hunt, and 

 to test some of the concepts outlined by 

 Thompson «Sc Hunt, could not be ignored. 

 Accordingly, we undertook a third survey 



physical labor to tabulation of data. Their 

 contribution is sincerely appreciated. 



For kindly answering our questions 

 concerning the 1928 survey and giving his 

 opinion on some of the recent collections, 

 we particularly thank Dr. David H. 

 Thompson. For graciously transcribing 

 his records and field notes on angling in 

 Champaign County, we are grateful to 

 Dr. Marcus S. Goldman. 



Dr. Milton B. Trautman and Dr. 

 Reeve M. Bailey checked the identifica- 



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