Fig. 1

Overview of concepts tested in our meta-analysis. Bold text in the bottom left corner of panels b-f indicate the hypothesis illustrated. In (a), movement can be measured as dispersal (D_N) in which the distance from each successive relocation (R1 – R4) is compared to the original tagging location, or displacement (D_N*) in which the distance from a successive relocation is compared to the previous relocation (e.g., R2 versus R3). In (b), the temporal resolution of relocations might be seasonal (S) or monthly (M) and the level of resolution has implications for detecting relationships between environmental variation and displacement. In (c), alignment between water temperature and changes in discharge can stimulate greater fish movement during warm periods. In (d), dispersal of freshwater fishes is typically expressed as a leptokurtic distribution of movements from the tagging location in upstream (positive numbers) or downstream (negative numbers) directions where skewness will be inconsequential in the Brazos River (BR) and demonstrate downstream bias in the Trinity River (TR) due to the arrangement of impoundments. In (e), high kurtosis values are indicative of limited dispersal while lower kurtosis values represent greater dispersal, and kurtosis might decline (i.e., greater movement) as water discharge or temperature increases. In (f), the RW model developed by [17] predicts dispersal distance by estimating stationary (σ_stat) and mobile components (σ_mob) of fish populations based on fish total length (TL), caudal fin aspect ratio (AR), stream order (SO), and the length of time between tagging and relocation (time). The migratory behavior of Alligator Gar (Atractosteus spatula) posits deviations in components from expected values. Figure created with BioRender.com (https://biorender.com/) using Alligator Gar image generated by Rick Hill (with permission)