Human-made threats to freshwater ecosystems are numerous and globally widespread. The legacy of agriculture and land use is manifested in the Ohio River Basin, drastically modified via logging and wetland draining following European colonization. After this period, the Ohio River Basin watershed was historically dominated by agriculture, and then converted from agriculture to forest during the 1960s-80s. The effects of these changes on fish throughout the basin are not fully known.

Pyron and colleagues used 57 years of rotenone and electrofishing fish collection survey data (1957-2014), collected by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, to examine changes to taxonomy, trophic classifications, and life history strategies of freshwater fish assemblages in the Ohio River Basin over this period.