A ictiofauna da bacia do Rio Paraíba do Sul. Biodiversidade e padrões biogeográficos

• Autor(a) principal: Bizerril,Carlos Roberto S. Fontenelle
• Data de Publicação: 1999
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Brazilian Archives of Biology and Technology
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1516-89131999000200014
• topic: Biodiversity; Paraíba do Sul river basin; freshwater fishes; southeastern Brazil

Fish fauna taxonomic composition and biogeographic informations of the Paraíba do Sul river basin are presented. Samples were taken in 75 units between January/1995 and June/1998. Species were identified and classified according its distributional pattern. Biogeographic analyses were conduced using macro, meso and micro scales. A total of 167 species were sampled, being 37 marine species. Among the marine taxa, Awaous tajasica and Oosthetus lineatus seems to spend their whole life histories in the freshwater environments. Sixteen species were introduced in the basin. Most of the native taxa inhabit the rivers’storage zone, mainly in pools. Faunistic similarities between the Paraíba do Sul river basin and other Brazilian rivers suggest that the environment studied were formed by the capture of portions of the rivers Grande and Tietê (Paraná river basin) and of small streams that nowadays flows directly from the Serra dos Orgãos hills to the Atlantic ocean. Five main endemism areas were recognised in the studied basin. Another five subareas presented low levels of biotic integrity, resulting in a visible process of extinction.