Machine learning applied to lentic habitat use by spawning walleye demonstrates the benefits of considering multiple spatial scales in aquatic research

Scale and hierarchy have received less attention in aquatic systems compared to terrestrial. Walleye Sander vitreus spawning habitat offers an opportunity to investigate scale’s importance. We estimated lake-, transect-, and quadrat-scale influences on nearshore walleye egg deposition in 28 Minnesota lakes from 2016-2018. Random forest models (RFM) estimated importance of predictive variables to walleye egg deposition. Predictive accuracies of a multi-scale classification tree (CT) and a quadrat-scale CT were compared. RFM results suggested that five of our variables were unimportant when predicting egg deposition. The multi-scale CT was more accurate than the quadrat-scale CT when predicting egg deposition. Both model results suggest that in-lake egg deposition by walleye is regulated by hierarchical abiotic processes and that silt/clay abundance at the transect-scale (reef-scale) is more important than abundance at the quadrat-scale (within-reef). Our results show machine learning can be used for scale-optimization and potentially to determine cross-scale interactions. Further incorporation of scale and hierarchy into studies of aquatic systems will increase our understanding of species-habitat relationships, especially in lentic systems where multi-scale approaches are rarely used.