Freshwater fish fauna of Krishna River at Wai, northern Western Ghats, India

Abstract

Freshwater fish fauna of the Krishna River at Wai, and the Dhom reservoir upstream of Wai, was studied. Fifty one species belonging to 14 families and 33 genera were recorded; 13 endemic to the Western Ghats and two to the Krishna River system. Moderate to rare populations were found for six globally threatened species: Gonoproktopterus curmuca, Labeo potail, Schismatorhynchos nukta, Tor khudree, T. mussullah and Parapsilorhynchus discophorus. Fish in this area are under threat due to two introduced species and five transplanted species, and due to other anthropogenic activities such as overfishing and organic and inorganic pollution of the river. Site based conservation action plans are needed for conservation of rare and threatened fish in this area. Krishna River originates in Wai Taluka, Satara District, Maharashtra, India. The river flows west-east and the first major dam along its course is Dhom Dam, while the first major city is Wai. Some studies are available on the fish fauna of Krishna River at Wai and Dhom reservoir. Silas (1953) recorded nine species of freshwater fish from the river at Wai. Jayaram (1995) studied the entire Krishna River system and mentioned that collections were made from both Dhom reservoir and Krishna River at Wai. However, he did not provide a separate checklist of fish in this area. As an offshoot of the same work, Srithar & Jayaram (1990) described a species, Salmophasia longicauda, and suggested that both S. longicauda and an allied species S. novacula are found in the fish catches of Dhom reservoir. Arunachalam et al. (2002) recorded 14 species of freshwater fish from Dhom reservoir. Taken together, these studies list 22 fish species in this area, which is an under representation compared to checklists from other tributaries of the Krishna River system (Kharat et al. 2003; Jadhav et al. 2011; Dahanukar et al. 2012). There is no documentation of threats to fish species in this area. In the present work we have studied the fish fauna of both Dhom reservoir and Krishna River at Wai in order to document both diversity and threats. Fish were collected from Krishna River at Dhom 2644