180

rookery; although Ogden et al., (in press) demonstrated

that sunfish and other species are a more significant

source of food to the storks in Everglades National Park.

Observations during this study led to the conclusion that,

at least under some circumstances, Wood Storks eat gar. It

also appears from this study that gar are the major

competitors of the birds for other prey species, and

therefore important to this study.


Mosquitofish

 Figures 42 and 43 show the standing stock (grams dry

weight per square meter) of Mosquitofish in the marsh on

each sampling date. Points are the averages of mean dry

weight per square meter from three different locations

(with five to 10 collections at each location). There were

no significant differences between means at the different

locations at the 95% confidence level. Figure 44 shows the

standing stock of Mosquitofish in the vegetated border of

the pond, measured after concentration of fish had begun.

 The high variances and large confidence intervals

exhibited by the Mosquitofish data were not unusual for

animal populations, which are often patchily distributed,

even in homogeneous habitat. Computed Morista indices

(Southwood, 1971) showed that Mosquitofish distribution

over the marsh was never "uniform" but varied from "random"

to "aggregated" with no apparent pattern in space or time.