Hydrological seasonality dictates fish fauna of the lower Araguaia River, Tocantins-Araguaia basin

Abstract

Hydrological seasonality of flow dictates diversity in tropical aquatic ecosystems. Large tropical rivers and tributaries are typically more depth and shows increased flow velocity and area in flood than in dry season. A thorough analysis of seasonality effect on fish community structure can provide valuable information of major forces driving tropical communities. However, these types of analyses have been limited by poor knowledge of tropical diversity, human impacts on environment, and biased sampling methods. We used a pristine large tropical river (and tributaries) and five types (12 gill nets, beach seine nets, longlines, branch baited hooks, and cast nets) of fishing gears to present an evaluation of flow seasonality effect on fish community. We sampled fourteen sites in river channel and tributaries in the lower Araguaia River. Sampling was conducted in flood (March and May 2009) and dry (July and September 2009) seasons of a typical seasonal year. Species richness, Shannon Diversity and Evenness, mean similarity of binary data, and abundance (CPUE) were analyzed by PERMANOVA and PCoA. We also analyzed the species most correlated (by Spearman correlation rank) with flood and dry season. Features differed significantly between flood and dry seasons, but not between channel and tributaries. The composition and abundance of community, and the representative species of flood and dry changed quite along the year. Flood showed lotic-related species, and dry presented lentic-related species. Thus, we achieved an alternation of fish community between season, both for channel and tributaries.