Impacts of a reservoir on fish assemblages of small tributaries of the Corumbá river, Brazil: Fid-Bau Portal

Impacts of a reservoir on fish assemblages of small tributaries of the Corumbá river, Brazil

Penczak, Tadeusz / Agostinho, Angelo A. / Gomes, Luiz C. / Latini, João D.

10.1002/rra.1200.abs

Fish community surveys were conducted in five tributaries of the Corumbá River before and after damming. Electrofishing samples were collected monthly in the pre‐impoundment period (March 1996 to August 1996) and 15 in the post‐impoundment period (September 1996 to February 1999). A self‐organizing map (SOM, an Artificial Neural Network algorithm) was used to represent the patterns of fish assemblages. Samples collected in both the pre‐ and post‐impoundment periods were randomly dispersed on the SOM, and, therefore, a clear and significant pattern of separation between samples collected during these two time periods was not found. Mean and maximum water depth, which is correlated with ground water level, did not significantly separate the pre‐ and post‐impoundment samples. However, we found significant differences between the two periods for water temperature, pH, conductivity, DO and current velocity, but abundances of fish species (summarized in the clusters identified by the SOM) did not differ significantly. Instead, the validity of the clusters distinguished by the SOM was confirmed by significant differences in some biotic variables: species richness, equitability and log transformed total abundance. Indicator species values identified the most preferred cluster (and respective complex of environmental factors) for a given species. Only one cluster did not contain any significant species indicator values, but it was dominated by samples from the Furnas Stream, which was the only effluent that could be entered by fish from the main river channel after the damming owing to its location below the dam, which has no fish ladder. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.