Fish Communities of Tropical Headwater Streams Under Multiple Land-use Influence
Fish communities of tropical headwater streams
Abstract
The intensive development of agricultural activities can be a major threat to the extinction of fish fauna in the tropical headwater streams of Borneo Island. Insufficient information on the influence of multiple land-use on fish communities can lead to failure in preserving ecological buffer zones along stream channels and the loss of aquatic biodiversity. We investigated fish communities of tropical headwater streams in Bau District of Sarawak State that flow through different types of land-uses. It is hypothesised that multiple land-use influent fish diversity and abundance. Fish were sampled at three headwater streams, Sg Bu’un, Sg Dian and Sg Sibomou of Sarawak Kanan River that have multiple land use in the catchment areas. The assessment of land use activities and fish sampling were done once in dry and rainy months. The assessment of land use showed that the distribution of agricultural activities is not consistent across the water catchments of the three headwater streams, which among others could be depending on soil fertility and the interests of the farmers. Oil palm plantation was the major agricultural activity in the catchment of headwater streams. The aboveground biomass varied with the type of land use, size of coverage, and age of the forest or plantation. The fish fauna of the three headwater streams was represented by 25 species in ten families and six orders, which was dominated by the family Cyprinidae. The cyprinids made up 17% of the total individuals with three dominant species are Barbodes sealei, Rasbora cryptica and Oxygaster anomalura. The diversity index of Shannon was significantly different among the three headwater streams. The headwater streams with high coverage of oil palm plantations showed significantly low species richness and high number of individuals. Fish richness and abundance in dry season were significantly lower than rainy season. The less sensitive species such as Systomus rubripinnis, Barbodes sealei, Rasbora cryptica,and Parachela oxygastroides were dominant in three headwater streams in both wet and dry months. The findings of this study may suggest that the width of buffer zone along stream channel could be estimated by integrating size of the major land use in the catchment, precipitation, and management practices of each type of land-use.
References
Dudgeon, D. (2000). The ecology of tropical Asian rivers and streams in relation to biodiversity conservation. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 31: 239-263.
Fold, N. & Hansen, T.A. (2007). Oil palm expansion in Sarawak. In Connell, J. and Waddell, E. (eds.), Environment, development and changes in rural Asia-Pacific between local and global. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Pp. 47-166.
Funge-Smith, S. & Bennett, A. (2019). A fresh look at inland fisheries and their role in food security and livelihoods. Fish and Fisheries, 20: 1176-1195. doi:10.1111/faf.12403.
Grifin, A. (2014). Impacts of land use (oil palm) on the fish fauna, macrobenthos and water quality of Kayan River and its tributaries, Lundu, Sarawak. (MSc thesis), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia.
Hammer, Ø., Haper, D.A.T. & Ryan, P.D. (2001). PAST. Paleontological statistics software package for education and data analysis. Palaeontological Electronica, 4(1): 1-9.
Hon, J. & Shibata, S. (2013). A review on land use in the Malaysian State of Sarawak, Borneo and recommendations for wildlife conservation inside production forest environment. Borneo Journal of Resource Science and Technology, 3(2): 22-35.
Inoue, M., Iwata, T., Nakano, S., Doi, A. & Miyasaka, H. (2003). Fish assemblage composition, abundance-habitat relationships and habitat use in tropical rain forest streams, Sarawak, Borneo: effects of past deforestation. Biosphere Conservation, 5(2): 71-86.
Kottelat, M. (2013). The fishes of the inland waters of Southeast Asia: a catalogue and core bibliography of the fishes known to occur in freshwaters, mangroves and estuaries. Raffles Bulletin of Zoology Supplement, 27: 1-663.
Kottelat, M., Whitten, A.J., Kartikasari, S.N. & Wirjoatmodjo, S. (1993). Freshwater Fishes of Western Indonesia and Sulawesi. Periplus Editions (HK) LTD., Indonesia. P. 344.
Ligtermoet, E., Chambers, J.M., Kobryn, H.T. & Davis, J. (2009). Determining the extent and condition of riparian zones in drinking water supply catchments in Sarawak, Malaysia. Water Science & Technology: Water Supply, 9(5): 517-531. doi.10.2166/ws.2009.580.
Martin-Smith, K.M. (1998). Effects of disturbance caused by selective timber extraction on fish communities in Sabah, Malaysia. Environmental Biology of Fishes, 53: 155-167.
McCune, B. & Mefford, M.J. (2018). PC-ORD. Multivariate Analysis of Ecological Data. Version 7.08.
Morel, A.S., Fisher, J.B. & Malhi, Y. (2012). Evaluating the potential to monitor aboveground biomass in forest and oil palm in Sabah, Malaysia for 2000-2008 Landsat ETM+ and ALOS-PALSAR. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 33(11): 3614-3639. doi:10.1080/01431 161.2011.631949.
Olson, K.R. & Morton, L.W. (2018). Water rights and fights: Lao dams on the Mekong River. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 73(2): 35A-41A. doi: 10.2489/jswc.73.2.35A.
Ormerod, S.J., Dobson, M., Hildrew, A.G. & Townsend, C.R. (2010). Multiple stressors in freshwater ecosystems. Freshwater Biology, 55 (Suppl. 1): 1-4.
Rachmatika, I., Nasi, R., Sheil, D. & Wan, M. (2005). A first look at the fish species of the Middle Malinau. Taxonomy, ecology, vulnerability and importance. Centre for International Research, Indonesia. 34 pp.
Roberts, T.R. (1989). The freshwater fishes of western Borneo (Kalimantan Barat, Indonesia). Memoirs of the California Academy Science, 14: 1-120.
Sangin, S.E. & Mersat, N.I. (2013). Landowner’s response and adaptation to large scale land development projects in Sarawak, Malaysia. The Macrotheme Review, 2(6): 146-162.
Sapis, A. (2014). Community structure of fishes and macroinvertebrates and their relationships with selected habitat characteristics in tributaries of upper Sarawak Kiri River, Sarawak. (MSc thesis), Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia.
Singh, M., Malhi, Y. & Bhagwat, S. (2014). Evaluating land use and aboveground biomass dynamics in an oil palm-dominated landscape in Borneo using spatial optical remote sensing. Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, 8(1): 083695.
Tan, H.H. (2006). The Borneo Sucker: Revision of the Torrent Loaches of Borneo. Natural History Publication (Borneo), Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. 253 pp.
Trautwein, C., Schinegger, R. & Schmutz, S. (2012). Cumulative effects of land use on fish metrics in different types of running waters in Austria. Aquatic Sciences, 74: 329-341. doi:10. 1007/s00027-011-0224-5.
Wilkinson, C.L., Yeo, D.C.J., Tan, H.H., Fikri, A.H. & Ewers, R.M. (2018). Land-use change is associated with a significant loss of freshwater fish species and functional richness in Sabah, Malaysia. Biological Conservation, 222: 164-171.
Copyright (c) 2023 Borneo Journal of Resource Science and Technology
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright Transfer Statement for Journal
1) In signing this statement, the author(s) grant UNIMAS Publisher an exclusive license to publish their original research papers. The author(s) also grant UNIMAS Publisher permission to reproduce, recreate, translate, extract or summarize, and to distribute and display in any forms, formats, and media. The author(s) can reuse their papers in their future printed work without first requiring permission from UNIMAS Publisher, provided that the author(s) acknowledge and reference publication in the Journal.
2) For open access articles, the author(s) agree that their articles published under UNIMAS Publisher are distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-SA (Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, for non-commercial purposes, provided the original work of the author(s) is properly cited.
3) For subscription articles, the author(s) agree that UNIMAS Publisher holds copyright, or an exclusive license to publish. Readers or users may view, download, print, and copy the content, for academic purposes, subject to the following conditions of use: (a) any reuse of materials is subject to permission from UNIMAS Publisher; (b) archived materials may only be used for academic research; (c) archived materials may not be used for commercial purposes, which include but not limited to monetary compensation by means of sale, resale, license, transfer of copyright, loan, etc.; and (d) archived materials may not be re-published in any part, either in print or online.
4) The author(s) is/are responsible to ensure his or her or their submitted work is original and does not infringe any existing copyright, trademark, patent, statutory right, or propriety right of others. Corresponding author(s) has (have) obtained permission from all co-authors prior to submission to the journal. Upon submission of the manuscript, the author(s) agree that no similar work has been or will be submitted or published elsewhere in any language. If submitted manuscript includes materials from others, the authors have obtained the permission from the copyright owners.
5) In signing this statement, the author(s) declare(s) that the researches in which they have conducted are in compliance with the current laws of the respective country and UNIMAS Journal Publication Ethics Policy. Any experimentation or research involving human or the use of animal samples must obtain approval from Human or Animal Ethics Committee in their respective institutions. The author(s) agree and understand that UNIMAS Publisher is not responsible for any compensational claims or failure caused by the author(s) in fulfilling the above-mentioned requirements. The author(s) must accept the responsibility for releasing their materials upon request by Chief Editor or UNIMAS Publisher.
6) The author(s) should have participated sufficiently in the work and ensured the appropriateness of the content of the article. The author(s) should also agree that he or she has no commercial attachments (e.g. patent or license arrangement, equity interest, consultancies, etc.) that might pose any conflict of interest with the submitted manuscript. The author(s) also agree to make any relevant materials and data available upon request by the editor or UNIMAS Publisher.
