Intertidal and basin-wide habitat use of fishes in the Scheldt estuary

Animals are influenced by both biotic and abiotic factors when selecting a habitat. The final decision of an organism to select a habitat generally depends on the fitness increase that can be expected. Within a selected habitat, interactions with conspecifics and other species also affect its quality. This thesis describes the habitat use of estuarine fishes in the Scheldt estuary. In the first part (Chapter 1 to Chapter 3) we studied the importance of intertidal migration for fishes and discussed the various factors that affect intertidal habitat quality. We also examined to what extent fishes affect their environment by predation on the intertidal infauna. The second part (Chapter 4 and 5) describes the effect of abiotic factors on the use of the Scheldt estuary by European flounderCHAPTER 1 – Introduction – p. 1 CHAPTER 2 - Zonation and tidal stream migration of fishes on an estuarine mudflat – p. 17 CHAPTER 3 - Taking potluck: trophic guild structure and feeding strategy of an intertidal fish assemblage – p. 37 CHAPTER 4 - Direct and indirect effects of predation on an intertidal benthic community – p. 61 CHAPTER 5 - A bioenergetics model for juvenile flounder Platichthys flesus – p. 81 CHAPTER 6 - A spatially-explicit bioenergetics model of habitat quality for flounder Platichthys flesus in the Scheldt estuary – p. 93 CHAPTER 7 - General discussion – p. 113 Summary – p. 129 Samenvatting – p. 131 References – p. 133status: publishe