Fish Ecology of the Alto Madre de Dios River Basin (Peru): Notes on Electrofishing Surveys, Elevation, Palm Swamp and Headwater Fishes

Centro de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Cambio Climático (BioCamb), Facultad de Ciencias del Medio Ambiente, Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica, Quito EC170103, Ecuador

Biodiversity Data Analytics and Environmental Quality Research Group, Department of Environmental Biology, University of Navarra, 31009 Pamplona, Spain

Department of Integrative Science, University of Huelva, Campus Universitario El Carmen, Avda. Andalucí s/n, 21071 Huelva, Spain

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Centro de Innovación Científica Amazónica, Jr Cajamarca Cdra 1, Puerto Maldonado 17001, Peru

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Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, 1834 Wake Forest Rd, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, USA

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Colección Científica de Ictiología, Universidad Nacional Amazónica de Madre de Dios, Av. Jorge Chávez 1160, Puerto Maldonado 17001, Peru

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Departamento de Ictiología, Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima 15072, Peru

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Academic Editor: José Luis Sánchez-Lizaso

Water 2021, 13(8), 1038; https://doi.org/10.3390/w13081038

Received: 8 February 2021 / Revised: 22 March 2021 / Accepted: 7 April 2021 / Published: 9 April 2021

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ecology and Conservation of Freshwater Fishes Biodiversity)

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Abstract

Our study analyzes the distribution of fish communities related to the environmental variables of the Alto Madre de Dios River, an Andean-Amazon watershed of southern Peru, between 300 and 2811 m a.s.l. within the Manu Biosphere Reserve. We provide new ecological and diversity data on fishes for these poorly studied rivers and new data for palm swamp habitats. With electric fishing techniques, we collected a total of 1934 fish specimens belonging to 78 species, 42 genera and 15 families. To assess main patterns of diversity we combined SIMPER and ANOSIM with canonical correspondence analysis to obtain an overview of the community structure of fish and their distribution related to aquatic habitats. Our results show an important shift on fish diversity at 700 m a.s.l. separating headwater and middle-lowland communities. Electrofishing was a hindrance due to the depth, flow and low conductivity of the rivers, but also allowed us to capture fish not observed with other techniques. We also compared the use of elevation with slope as an alternative variable for statistical analysis. Our results show that slope offers a solid and equivalent explanation for fish distribution variability, avoids redundance, and instead of giving geographical data offers ecologically solid information. View Full-Text

Keywords: Tropical Andes; Manu Biosphere Reserve; Astroblepus; Trichomycterus; Mauritia flexuosa

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MDPI and ACS Style

Tobes, I.; Ramos-Merchante, A.; Araujo-Flores, J.; Pino-del-Carpio, A.; Ortega, H.; Miranda, R. Fish Ecology of the Alto Madre de Dios River Basin (Peru): Notes on Electrofishing Surveys, Elevation, Palm Swamp and Headwater Fishes. Water 2021, 13, 1038. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13081038

AMA Style

Tobes I, Ramos-Merchante A, Araujo-Flores J, Pino-del-Carpio A, Ortega H, Miranda R. Fish Ecology of the Alto Madre de Dios River Basin (Peru): Notes on Electrofishing Surveys, Elevation, Palm Swamp and Headwater Fishes. Water. 2021; 13(8):1038. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13081038

Chicago/Turabian Style

Tobes, Ibon, Adrián Ramos-Merchante, Julio Araujo-Flores, Andrea Pino-del-Carpio, Hernán Ortega, and Rafael Miranda. 2021. "Fish Ecology of the Alto Madre de Dios River Basin (Peru): Notes on Electrofishing Surveys, Elevation, Palm Swamp and Headwater Fishes" Water 13, no. 8: 1038. https://doi.org/10.3390/w13081038

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Fish Ecology of the Alto Madre de Dios River Basin (Peru): Notes on Electrofishing Surveys, Elevation, Palm Swamp and Headwater Fishes

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