Diversity Patterns of Stream Fish Communities from Narmada River Basin, India

Shukla, Rohitashva (2017) Diversity Patterns of Stream Fish Communities from Narmada River Basin, India. PhD thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education & Research Kolkata.

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Abstract

Studies on fish diversity patterns and their determining factors have been used to develop an understanding of aquatic freshwater ecosystems and their functioning. Freshwater fishes are highly diverse group of vertebrates and often used as an indicator of healthy aquatic ecosystems. Several theories and concepts have been proposed to explain these patterns and their underlying mechanisms and some empirical studies have been shown to support many of these theories. However, there is limited literature on studies that investigate diversity, distribution, abundance patterns and ecological factors determining species interactions in tropical stream fish communities. This thesis aims to fill some of these gaps by examining stream fish diversity patterns of Narmada basin located in central India. We investigated the alpha and beta diversity, community-wide nestedness and species co-occurrence patterns for stream fish communities at spatial and temporal scales, and evaluated the relationship of environmental factors and anthropogenic disturbances with these patterns. Our study sites are located in the Narmada Valley region of Central India. Our findings demonstrate that diversity differs across spatial (across streams and flow regimes) and temporal scales (across seasons). Our results point towards the importance of replacement and abundance gain (or loss) across perennial, intermittent and regulated localities to maintain beta-diversity. Specifically, water physicochemical parameters were proven to shape diversity patterns for alpha and beta diversity. We suggest that increased human activities may accelerate local and regional extinction as high level of disturbances result in reduced immigration of fishes at local habitat scales. Finally, results of this study also suggest that macroecological properties of species predict the co-occurrence patterns of fishes in this region. This study helps to understand the ecology of stream fish communities of dry-wet tropical conditions for which literature is relatively rare. Further, these findings could be a useful tool for planning fish conservation and management strategies and their habitats in this region and in similar climatic conditions.

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