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Enhancement of fish communities, improvement of sampling and stock assessment in lakes and reservoirs.
RIBEIRO DE MORAES, Karlos
This Ph.D. thesis focuses on fish habitats, how we can improve their natural complexity, and how we can improve techniques to survey these habitats. With increasing human activities affecting freshwater ecosystems due to human population growth and industrial expansion, it is crucial to study environmental changes, their impacts, and ways to mitigate damage. As many biotic and abiotic factors can influence the health and diversity of the community, for our study, we focused on habitat definition and complexity, and the effect of fishery management. Paper (I) focuses on the transition between littoral (shallow areas) and pelagic (open water) habitats and their impact on fish communities. The littoral zone, typically the most intricate segment of a water body, serves as the primary habitat for a significant portion of the fish community and species diversity. However, its spatial extent is very limited. Littoral delimitation is important for obtaining a true picture of the fish community composition and for its sustainable management decisions. Paper (II) investigated the impact of protected areas on fish populations in the Lipno reservoir in the Czech Republic, specifically focusing on the abundance, biomass, standard length, and diversity indices. Protected areas have legislation that reduces or stops certain anthropological impacts to help recover the ecosystem. These areas are normally linked to spawning areas, feeding grounds, or rare species and are vital for the restoration and proliferation of specific environments. In our case, we revealed more and larger predatory fish in protected and low anthropological impact areas. Paper (III) tests the introduction of artificial habitats, which are man-made structures or environments created to provide additional habitats and support for various organisms. Despite efforts to restore habitats to their natural states, there are instances where complete restoration is challenging. In particular, water bodies are subjected to significant anthropogenic alterations, such as reservoirs. In such instances, the introduction of artificial habitats has emerged as a solution to rapidly enhance the complexity of these environments. In Lipno reservoir, artificial floating islands attracted young-of-the-year of common species.
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