Length–weight and length–length relationships for common fish and crayfish species in the Everglades, Florida, USA

The Everglades is a vast wetland system of natural marshes and deep water canals covering approximately 7,000 km2 in south Florida, USA (25°14′–26°22′N; 80°27′–81°15′W). This ecosystem is the focus of a large restoration effort that will alter hydrologic patterns and reduce nutrient pollution. Characteristics of aquatic fauna are indicators for this restoration effort (Trexler and Goss, 2009) and they are the foodbase for predatory wading birds, another prominent group of indicator species (Frederick et al., 2009). Thus, detailed information on characteristics of fish and crayfish (Procambarus spp.), such as size, density, and biomass are central to the restoration and management of the Everglades, as they are to other wetland ecosystems (Cvetkovic and Chow-Fraser, 2011; Horváth et al., 2012).

Length–weight relationships (LWR) are useful for determining biomass when only length is known (Froese, 2006). Length–length relationships (LLR) are useful for converting between several measures of body length, such as standard length (SL) to total length (TL). This study provides updated length–weight and length–length relationships for 18 fish and two crayfish species common within the Everglades system. Additionally, weight–length relationships for 14 species and length–length relationships for two species are presented to FishBase (Froese and Pauly, 2012) for the first time.