Effect of land-use types on the ecomorphological structure of fish assemblage in distinct mesohabitats of neotropical streams

• Autor(a) principal: Pessoa,Leonardo Antunes
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Baumgartner,Matheus Tenório, Santana Junior,Marcelo Percilio, Pagotto,João Paulo Alves, Pessoa,Luiz Gustavo Antunes, Goulart,Erivelto
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biota Neotropica
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1676-06032021000300204
• topic: urban ecosystem; headwater streams; ecomorphological distances; fauna homogenization

Abstract The use and occupation of land by human population substantially influence environmental variables and fish assemblage in streams. However, there is little knowledge on how these changes affect the ecomorphological structure of fish assemblage in mesohabitats. Therefore, we aim to assess whether the land-use types affect the ecomorphological structure of fish assemblage in distinct mesohabitats. Environmental and ichthyofaunistic data were collected in three mesohabitats (rifles, runs, and pools) of five rural and five urban streams. Twenty-one ecomorphological indices were obtained from the mean of linear morphological measurements and areas of the fishes. Subsequently, the Euclidean distance was calculated, based on the ecomorphological indices, between each pair of species, to measure the ecomorphological distances for the mesohabitats of the rural and urban streams. The results show that the urban environment is more harmful to streams than the rural one, due to changes in the environmental variables and decrease in species richness. The main environmental changes found in urban streams were the decrease in canopy cover by riparian vegetation and dissolved oxygen, and the increase in electrical conductivity and bed silting. Also, there was a significant decrease in the morphological similarity between fish species in the mesohabitats of urban streams compared to rural ones. Therefore, we can conclude that the urban environment leads to the loss of morphologically similar fish species in the mesohabitats, with only a few functionally distinct species remaining.