Marine fish and shrimp species are often dependent on estuarine habitats for juvenile or other early life stages, yet the effect of estuarine habitat availability has rarely been linked to the offshore, marine distribution of species. Penaeid shrimp are an estuary-dependent taxa that have global economic importance and are frequently cited as prey of fish. Species distribution models were developed for three penaeid species in the northern Gulf of Mexico, USA, with the objectives of modeling the distribution of species and testing the influ ence of multiscale predictor variables depicting oceanography, geography, geomorphology, and area of nearby estuaries and coastal wetlands. Fishery-independent trawl survey data of brown shrimp (Penaeus aztecus), white shrimp (Penaeus setiferus), and pink shrimp (Penaeus duorarum) were analyzed with boosted regression tree statistics. Species distribution models of catch per unit effort explained 30–45% of model deviance for brown shrimp and white shrimp; the presence/absence model of pink shrimp had an area under the curve statistic of 0.85 and overall accuracy of 83% correct. Oceanographic predictors had the greatest influence in each of the models, and the spatial distribution of each species was distinct based on these conditions. The marine distribution of all three penaeids was associated with nearby wetland area, and white shrimp were additionally associated with nearby estuary area. Geomorphology predictors were retained less often and were of low relative influence. Our findings demonstrate the importance of considering multiple spatial scales when identifying species-habitat relationships, including the influence of adjacent or nearby environments.

海水鱼类和虾类物种通常在少年或其他早期生命阶段依赖河口生境，但河口生境可利用性的影响很少与物种的近海海洋分布有关。对虾是一种依赖河口的分类单元，在全球具有重要的经济意义，经常被称为鱼类的猎物。在美国墨西哥湾北部为三种对虾物种建立了物种分布模型，其目的是对物种分布进行建模并测试描述海洋学，地理学，地貌以及附近河口和沿海地区的多尺度预测变量的影响湿地。不依赖渔业的拖网调查数据，棕色虾（Penaeus aztecus），白色虾（Penaeus setiferus））和粉红色的虾（Penaeus duorarum）通过增强的回归树统计数据进行了分析。单位捕捞量的物种分布模型解释了棕色虾和白色虾的模型偏差的30–45％；粉红虾的存在/不存在模型的曲线统计下的面积为0.85，正确的总体准确性为83％。海洋学预测因素在每个模型中的影响最大，并且根据这些条件，每个物种的空间分布是不同的。这三种对虾的海洋分布都与附近的湿地地区有关，而白虾也与附近的河口地区有关。地貌预测因子的保留频率较低，相对影响较小。我们的发现表明，在确定物种与栖息地的关系时，考虑多个空间尺度非常重要，