The fish fauna of the upper Pira&amp;iacute; drainage, a transposed mountain river system in southeastern, Brazil

Victor De Brito,Paulo Andreas Buckup

doi:10.15560/15.1.235

Abstract

An annotated checklist of the ichthyofauna from the upper Piraí river drainage is provided. The Piraí river was a major right-bank tributary of the Paraíba do Sul river, but it has been artificially diverted to the coastal Guandu river system in southeastern Brazil to generate electric power and water for the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro. Based on our field sampling of 23 sites, 32 species belonging to 24 genera and 12 families were collected in 6 headwater tributaries of the Piraí river between 2009 and 2016. Phalloceros harpagos (Lucinda, 2008), Astyanax intermedius (Eigenmann, 1908), and Neoplecostomus microps (Steindachner, 1877b) were the most abundant and most widely distributed species in the samples. The sampled ichthyofauna is mostly composed by species from the Paraíba do Sul basin. Eight species are reported for the first time in the upper Piraí drainage, showing the importance of continuous ichthyofaunal surveys of fish in remaining areas of Atlantic Forest.

Highlights

The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is the second largest biome in South America, with one of the highest rates of species richness and endemism on the planet (Galindo-Leal and Câmara 2003, Ribeiro et al 2009)
We collected 7,860 fish specimens of 32 species belonging to 24 genera and 12 families in the upper Piraí river drainage (Table 2)
Phalloceros harpagos was the most abundant species, with 2,437 specimens (31.1%), followed by Astyanax intermedius with 1,597 specimens (20.4%), Neoplecostomus microps with 676 specimens (8.6%), Pareiorhina rudolphi with 553 specimens (7.1%), Geophagus brasiliensis with 497 specimens (6.4%), and Characidium lauroi with 444 specimens (5.7%)

Summary

Introduction

The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is the second largest biome in South America, with one of the highest rates of species richness and endemism on the planet (Galindo-Leal and Câmara 2003, Ribeiro et al 2009). Due to environmental impacts originating from human activities, only 16% of the original forest is preserved in reduced and isolated patches (Ribeiro et al 2009, 2011). Freshwater streams in southeastern Brazil are directly affected by the degradation of the Atlantic Forest, as their headwaters are located in these few remaining patches of forest, and the reduction of the riparian vegetation is one of the main sources of environmental impact in water bodies (Cetra and Ferreira 2016). Systematic surveys of fish communities that inhabit these streams are necessary to reduce knowledge gaps about biodiversity and to understand the state of conservation of the Atlantic Forest (Buckup et al 2014). The Piraí river drains the Biodiversity Corridor TinguáBocaina (BCTB) (Paiva and Coelho 2015).

Methods

Results

Conclusion