The importance of floodplains for the dynamics of fish communities of the upper river Paraná

Abstract

The last free stretch of the River Parana inside of Brazilian territory, about 230 km of the former 810 km, runs in a wide floodplain, which flood regime is controlled in part by upstream dams. Aim to evaluate the impacts of different levels of hydrological control on the regional fish diversity, nutritional condition, trophic categories proportion, reproduction and young abundance monthly sampling were carried, between 1986 and 1993, during three annual periods with different flood duration and intensity. Lagoons, secondary channels and river channel was sampled with gillnet of different mesh size and standardized effort. Diversity, evenness indexes and number of species increased with the occurrence of floods. The trophic category proportions varied among the periods considered, with a decrease in piscivores participation and an increase of iliophages, herbivores and insectivores (terrestrial) participation in big flood years. The tendencies for piscivores guild were not uniform to every species. The variations on the nutritional condition reveal that the absence of flooding has a negative effect on greater migratory species and positive on sedentary ones. The young abundance shows, however, that fail in the flooding has a strong negative impact on de recruitment of all the reproductive strategies. It's stressed the operational procedures in the upstream dams and the maintenance of the floodplain integrity is essential to preserve the regional biodiversity, fisheries and particularly the greater migratory fishes population.