Abstract
Lemon Bay is a narrow, shallow estuary in southwest Florida. Although its fish fauna has been studied intermittently since the 1880s, no detailed inventory has been available. We sampled fish and selected macroinvertebrates in the bay and lower portions of its tributaries from June 2009 through April 2010 using seines and trawls. One hundred three fish and six invertebrate taxa were collected. Pinfish Lagodon rhomboides, spot Leiostomus xanthurus, bay anchovy Anchoa mitchilli, mojarras Eucinostomus spp., silver perch Bairdiella chrysoura, and scaled sardine Harengula jaguana were among the most abundant species. To place our information into a broader ecological context, we compared the Lemon Bay fish assemblages with those of nearby estuaries. Multivariate analyses revealed that fish assemblages of Lemon and Sarasota bays differed from those of lower Charlotte Harbor and lower Tampa Bay at similarities of 68–75%, depending on collection gear. These differences were attributed to greater abundances of small-bodied fishes in Lemon and Sarasota bays than in the other much larger estuaries. Factors such as water circulation patterns, length of shoreline relative to area of open water, and proximity of Gulf passes to juvenile habitat may differ sufficiently between the small and large estuaries to affect fish assemblages.