| Affiliation: | (1) Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA;(2) Present address: School of Forestry and the Environment, Yale University, 370 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06520, USA |
| Abstract: | We sampled 35 lakes in northern Wisconsin to determine the presence of Orconectes rusticus, the rusty crayfish, and related this pattern to several parameters pertaining to potential invasion routes that could influence the distribution of these crayfish in the lakes. The presence of rusty crayfish in lakes was positively related to an index of human use and negatively related to the length of stream connections to other lakes containing the crayfish. Humans appear to act as vectors allowing crayfish to travel along discontinuous routes that otherwise would be inaccessible to them, and thus, provide crayfish with spatially discontinuous corridors that increase the probability of movement by channelizing the space between lakes. In contrast, streams correspond closely to the traditional definition of terrestrial corridors, in that they are spatially continuous. This distribution pattern suggests colonization operating via two corridors with two spatial scales, making management of the invasion of rusty crayfish complex. |
