Many species have distributions that span distinctly different physiographic regions, and effective conservation of such taxa will require a full accounting of all factors that potentially influence populations. Ecologists recognize effects of physiographic differences in topography, geology and climate on local habitat configurations, and thus the relevance of landscape heterogeneity to species distributions and abundances. However, research is lacking that examines how physiography affects the processes underlying metapopulation dynamics. We used data describing occupancy dynamics of stream fishes to evaluate evidence that physiography influences rates at which individual taxa persist in or colonize stream reaches under different flow conditions. Using periodic survey data from a stream fish assemblage in a large river basin that encompasses multiple physiographic regions, we fit multi-species dynamic occupancy models. Our modeling results suggested that stream fish colonization but not persistence was strongly governed by physiography, with estimated colonization rates considerably higher in Coastal Plain streams than in Piedmont and Blue Ridge systems. Like colonization, persistence was positively related to an index of stream flow magnitude, but the relationship between flow and persistence did not depend on physiography. Understanding the relative importance of colonization and persistence, and how one or both processes may change across the landscape, is critical information for the conservation of broadly distributed taxa, and conservation strategies explicitly accounting for spatial variation in these processes are likely to be more successful for such taxa.

许多物种的分布跨越明显不同的地理区域，要有效地保护此类分类单元，就必须全面考虑可能影响种群的所有因素。生态学家认识到地形，地质和气候方面的生理差异对当地栖息地构型的影响，因此也认识到景观异质性与物种分布和丰度的相关性。但是，缺乏研究来研究生理学如何影响基础种群动态的过程。我们使用描述溪流鱼类占用动态的数据来评估证据，即生理学影响个体分类群在不同流量条件下在溪流中持续存在或定殖的速率。我们使用来自大型流域的溪流鱼群的定期调查数据，该流域包含多个地貌区域，我们拟合了多种种群的动态占用模型。我们的模型结果表明，溪流鱼类的定殖而不是持久性受到生理学的强烈控制，沿海平原溪流的定殖率明显高于皮埃蒙特和蓝岭系统。像殖民化一样，持久性与河流流量大小的指数也呈正相关，但流量与持久性之间的关系并不取决于生理学。了解殖民化和持久性的相对重要性，以及一个或两个过程如何在整个景观中发生变化，对于保护分布广泛的生物分类群是至关重要的信息，