Book contents
- The Living Planet
- The Living Planet
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- One Introduction and the Evolution of Life on Earth
- Two Flowering Plants
- Three Bryophytes and Pteridophytes: Spore-Bearing Land Plants
- Four Terrestrial Mammals
- Five Marine Mammals: Exploited for Millennia, But Still Holding On
- Six How Birds Reveal the Scale of the Biodiversity Crisis
- Seven Reptiles
- Eight Amphibians
- Nine Freshwater Fishes: Threatened Species and Threatened Waters on a Global Scale
- Ten The Amazing Yet Threatened World of Marine Fishes
- Eleven Insects
- Twelve Marine Invertebrates
- Thirteen Non-Insect Terrestrial Arthropods
- Fourteen Terrestrial Invertebrates Other Than Arthropods and Molluscs
- Fifteen Non-Marine Molluscs
- Sixteen An Account of the Diversity and Conservation of Fungi and Their Close Relatives
- Seventeen Simple Life Forms
- Eighteen Assessing Species Conservation Status: The IUCN Red List and Green Status of Species
- Nineteen Problems with the World’s Ecosystems: The Future and Attempts to Mitigate Decline
- Twenty Conservation Methods and Successes
- Twenty One What Does the Future Hold for Our Planet and its Wildlife?
- Species Index
- Subject Index
- References
Nine - Freshwater Fishes: Threatened Species and Threatened Waters on a Global Scale
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2023
Edited by
Book contents
- The Living Planet
- The Living Planet
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- One Introduction and the Evolution of Life on Earth
- Two Flowering Plants
- Three Bryophytes and Pteridophytes: Spore-Bearing Land Plants
- Four Terrestrial Mammals
- Five Marine Mammals: Exploited for Millennia, But Still Holding On
- Six How Birds Reveal the Scale of the Biodiversity Crisis
- Seven Reptiles
- Eight Amphibians
- Nine Freshwater Fishes: Threatened Species and Threatened Waters on a Global Scale
- Ten The Amazing Yet Threatened World of Marine Fishes
- Eleven Insects
- Twelve Marine Invertebrates
- Thirteen Non-Insect Terrestrial Arthropods
- Fourteen Terrestrial Invertebrates Other Than Arthropods and Molluscs
- Fifteen Non-Marine Molluscs
- Sixteen An Account of the Diversity and Conservation of Fungi and Their Close Relatives
- Seventeen Simple Life Forms
- Eighteen Assessing Species Conservation Status: The IUCN Red List and Green Status of Species
- Nineteen Problems with the World’s Ecosystems: The Future and Attempts to Mitigate Decline
- Twenty Conservation Methods and Successes
- Twenty One What Does the Future Hold for Our Planet and its Wildlife?
- Species Index
- Subject Index
- References
Summary
Worldwide, freshwater biodiversity is in decline and increasingly threatened. Fishes are the best-documented indicators of this decline. General threats to persistence include: (1) competition for water, (2) habitat alteration, (3) pollution, (4) invasions of alien species, (5) commercial exploitation and (6) global climate change. Regional faunas usually face multiple, simultaneous causes of decline. Threatened species belong to all major evolutionary lineages of fishes, although families with the most imperilled species are those with the most species (e.g. Cyprinidae, Cichlidae). Independent evaluation of California’s highly endemic (81%) fish fauna for comparison with IUCN results validates the alarm generated by IUCN evaluations. However, IUCN overall evaluation is conservative, because it does not include many intraspecific taxa for which extinction trends are roughly double those at the species level. Dramatic global loss of freshwater fish species is imminent without immediate and bold actions by multiple countries.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Living PlanetThe State of the World's Wildlife, pp. 177 - 205Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
Adams, M., Raadik, T.A., Burridge, C.P. and Georges, A. (2014) Global biodiversity assessment and hyper-cryptic species complexes: more than one species of elephant in the room. Syst Biol 63: 518–533.Google Scholar
Allan, J.D., Abell, R., Hogan, Z. et al. (2005) Overfishing of inland waters. BioScience 55: 1041–1051.Google Scholar
Baird, I.G., Flaherty, M.S. and Phylavanh, B. (2003) Rhythms of the river: lunar phases and migrations of small carps (Cyprinidae) in the Mekong River. Nat Hist Bull Siam Soc 5: 5–36.Google Scholar
Baran, E. (2010) Mekong Fisheries And Mainstream Dams. Fisheries sections of the Strategic Environmental Assessment of Hydropower on the Mekong Mainstream prepared for the Mekong River Commission by the International Centre for Environmental Management. http://pubs.iclarm.net/resource_centre/WF_2736.pdf (accessed October 2022).Google Scholar
Barbarossa, V., Bosmans, J., Wanders, N., et al. (2021) Threats of global warming to the world’s freshwater fishes. Nat Commun, 12: 1701.Google Scholar
Baumsteiger, J. and Moyle, P.B. (2019) A reappraisal of the California roach/hitch (Cypriniformes, Cyprinidae, Hesperoleucus/Lavinia) species complex. Zootaxa 4543(2): 2221–2240.Google Scholar
Bickford, D., Lohman, D.J., Sodhi, N. S., et al. (2007) Cryptic species as a new window on diversity and conservation. Trends Ecol Evol 22: 148–155.Google Scholar
Closs, G.P., Angermeier, P.L., Darwell, W.R.T. and Balcombe, S.T. (2015) Why are freshwater fishes so threatened? In: Closs, G.P., Krkosek, M. and Olden, J.D. (Eds.), Conservation of Freshwater Fishes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Closs, G.P., Krkosek, M. and Olden, J.D. (Eds.) (2016) Conservation of Freshwater Fishes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Darwell, W.R.T. and Freyhof, J. (2015) Lost fishes: who is counting? The extent of the threat to freshwater fish biodiversity. In Closs, G.P., Krkosek, M. and Olden, J.D. (Eds.), Conservation of Freshwater Fishes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Darwell, W.R.T., Bremerich, V., De Weveret, A., et al. (2018) The Alliance for Freshwater Life: a global call to unite efforts for freshwater biodiversity science and conservation. Aquat Conserv 2018: 1–8.Google Scholar
Dudgeon, D., Arthington, A.H., Gessner, M.O., et al. (2006) Freshwater biodiversity: importance, threats, status and conservation challenges. Biol Rev 81: 163–182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fengzhi, H., Zarfl, C., Bremerich, V., et al. (2019) The global decline of freshwater megafauna. Glob Change Biol 2019: 1–10.Google Scholar
Fricke, R., Eschmeyer, W.N. and Fong, J.D. (2022) Eschmeyer’s Catalog of Fishes: Species by Family/Subfamily. San Francisco, CA: California Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Friedrich, T. (2018) Danube sturgeons: past and future. In: Schmutz, S. and Sendzimir, J. (Eds.), Riverine Ecosystem Management. Vol 8 in Aquatic Ecology. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.Google Scholar
Funge-Smith, S. and Bennett, A. (2019) A fresh look at inland fisheries and their role in food security and livelihoods. Fish Fish 20: 1176–1195.Google Scholar
Harrison, I., Abell, R., Darwall, W., et al. (2018) The freshwater biodiversity crisis. Science 362: 1369.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hastings, P., Walker, H.J. and Galland, G.R. (2014) Fishes: A Guide to their Diversity. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Haxton, T.J. and Cano, T.M. (2016) A global perspective of fragmentation on a declining taxon: the sturgeon (Acipenseriformes). Endanger Species Res 31: 203–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hogan, Z.S., Moyle, P.B., May, B., Vander Zander, M.J. and Baird, I.G. (2004) The imperiled giants of the Mekong. Am Sci 92: 228–237.Google Scholar
Impson, N.D., Marriott, M.S., Bills, I.R. and Skelton, P.H. (2007) Conservation biology and management of a critically endangered cyprinid, the Twee River redfin, Barbus erubescens (Teleostei: Cyprinidae) of the Cape Floristic Region, South Africa. Afr J Aquat Sci 32: 27–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
IUCN. (2012) Red List Categories and Criteria: Version 3.1, Second Edn. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: IUCN.Google Scholar
IUCN. (2022) Red List Version 2022-1. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: IUCN. www.iucnredlist.org (accessed October 2022).Google Scholar
Karr, J.R. (1991) Biological integrity: a long‐neglected aspect of water resource management. Ecol Appl 1: 66–84.Google Scholar
Kershner, J.L., Williams, J.E., Greswell, R.E. and Lobon-Cervia, J. (Eds.) (2019) Trout and Char of the World. Bethesda, MD: American Fisheries Society.Google Scholar
Kuhajda, B.R. and Rider, S.J. (2016) Status of the imperiled Alabama sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus suttkusi Williams and Clemmer, 1991). J Appl Ichthyol 32(Suppl. 1): 15–29.Google Scholar
Leidy, R.A. and Moyle, P.B. (1997) Conservation status of the world’s fish fauna: an overview. In: Fiedler, P.A. and Karieva, P.M. (Eds.), Conservation Biology for the Coming Decade. New York: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Leidy, R.A. and Moyle, P.B. (2021) Keeping up with the status of freshwater fishes: a California (USA) perspective. Conserv Sci Pract 2021: e474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthaei, C.D. and Lange, K. (2016) Multiple stressor effects on freshwater fish: a review and meta-analysis. In Closs, G.P., Krkosek, M. and Olden, J.D. (Eds.), Conservation of Freshwater Fishes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Micklin, P. (2016) The future Aral Sea: hope and despair. Environ Earth Sci 75: 844–859.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moyle, P.B. (1993) Fish: An Enthusiast’s Guide. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Moyle, P.B. (2014) Novel aquatic ecosystems: the new reality for streams in California and other Mediterranean climate regions. River Res Appl 30: 1335–1344.Google Scholar
Moyle, P.B. and Leidy, R.A. (1992) Loss of biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems: evidence from fish faunas. In Fiedler, P.L. and Jain, S.A. (Eds.), Conservation Biology: The Theory and Practice of Nature Conservation, Preservation, and Management. New York: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar
Moyle, P.B. and Marchetti, M.P. (2006) Predicting invasion success: freshwater fishes in California as a model. Bioscience 56: 515–524.Google Scholar
Moyle, P.B., Katz, J.V.E. and Quiñones, R.M. (2011) Rapid decline of California’s native inland fishes: a status assessment. Biol Conserv 144: 2414–2423.Google Scholar
Moyle, P.B., Kiernan, J.D., Crain, P.K. and Quiñones, R.M. (2013) Climate change vulnerability of native and alien freshwater fishes of California: a systematic assessment approach. PLoS One 8(5): e63883.Google Scholar
Moyle, P.B., Lusardi, R., Samuel, P. and Katz, J. (2017) State of the Salmonids: Status of California’s Emblematic Fishes 2017. San Francisco, CA: Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California and California Trout.Google Scholar
Moyle, P.B., Quiñones, R.M., Katz, J.V.E. and Weaver, J. (2015) Fish Species of Special Concern in California, Third Edn. Sacramento, CA: California Department of Fish and Wildlife.Google Scholar
NSF. (2008) All Catfish Species (Siluriformes): Phase I of an Inventory of the Otophysi. Award Abstract #0315963. www.nfs.gov (accessed October 2022).Google Scholar
NSF. (2010) All Cypriniformes Species: Phase II of an Inventory of the Otophysi. Award Abstract #1022720. www.nfs.gov (accessed October 2022).Google Scholar
Opperman, J., Hartmann, J., Carvallo, J.P. (2019) Connected and Flowing: a Renewable Future for Rivers, Climate and People. Washington, DC: WWF and The Nature Conservancy,Google Scholar
Opperman, J., Moyle, P.B., Larsen, E.W., Florsheim, J.L. and Manfree, A.D. (2017) Floodplains: Processes, Ecosystems, and Services in Temperate Regions. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ramirez, J. L., Birindelli, J.L., Carvalho, D.C., et al. (2017) Revealing hidden diversity of the underestimated neotropical ichthyofauna: DNA barcoding in the recently described genus Megaleporinus (Characiformes: Anostomidae). Front Genet 8: 1–11.Google Scholar
Rand, P.S., Goslin, M., Gross, M.R., et al. (2012) Global assessment of extinction risk to populations of sockeye salmon, Oncorhynchus nerka. PLoS One 7(4): e34065.Google Scholar
Ravelomanana, T., Maiz-Tome, L., Darwell, W., et al. (2018) The status and distribution of freshwater fishes. In: Máiz-Tomé, L., Sayer, C. and Darwall, W. (Eds.) The Status and Distribution of Freshwater Biodiversity in Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Island Hotspot. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.Google Scholar
Reid, A.J., Carlson, A.K., Creed, I.F., et al. (2018) Emerging threats and persistent conservation challenges for freshwater biodiversity. Biol Rev 94(3): 849–873.Google Scholar
Ricciardi, A. and Rasmussen, J.B. (1999) Extinction rates of North American freshwater fauna. Conserv Biol 13: 1220–1222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruban, G., Khodorevskaya, R. and Shatunovskii, M. (2019) Factors influencing the natural reproduction decline in the beluga (Huso, Kinnaeus, 1758), Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii, Brandt & Ratzeburg, 1833) and stellate sturgeon (A. stellatus, Pallas, 1771) of the Volga-Caspian basin: A review. J Appl Ichthyol 35: 387–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sayer, C.A., Máiz-Tomé, L. and Darwall, W.R.T. (Eds.) (2018) Freshwater Biodiversity in the Lake Victoria Basin: Guidance for Species Conservation, Site Protection, Climate Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Springer, A.M. and van Vliet, G.B. (2014) Climate change, pink salmon, and the nexus between bottom-up and top-down forcing in the subarctic Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 111(18): E1880–E1888.Google Scholar
Stiassny, M.L.J. and Raminosoa, N. (1994) The fishes of the inland waters of Madagascar. In: Teugels, G.G., Guégan, J.F. and Albaret, J.J. (Eds.), Biological Diversity of Fresh- and Brackish Water Fishes. Tervuren, Belgium: Musée Royal de L’Afrique Centrale.Google Scholar
Strayer, D.L. and Dudgeon, D. (2010) Freshwater biodiversity conservation: recent progress and future challenges. J N Am Benthol Soc 29: 344–358.Google Scholar
Tickner, D. J., Opperman, J.J., Abell, R., et al. (2020) Bending the curve of global freshwater biodiversity loss: an emergency recovery plan. BioScience, 70: 330–342.Google Scholar
University of Melbourne. (2016) Twenty new freshwater fish species uncovered in Australia: remote, iconic Kimberley unveiled as biodiversity hub. Science Daily, 6 January. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160106110713.htm (accessed October 2022).Google Scholar
Vörösmarty, C.J., McIntyre, B., Gessner, M.O., et al. (2010) Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity. Nature 467(731): 555–561.Google Scholar
Williams, J.G., Moyle, P.B., Kondolf, M. and Webb, A. (2019) Environmental Flow Assessment: Methods and Applications. Oxford, UK: Wiley.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). (2020) Living Planet Report 2020. Bending the Curve of Biodiversity Loss: A Deep Dive into Freshwater. Almond, R.E., Grooten, A. and Petersen, T. (Eds). Gland, Switzerland: WWF.Google Scholar
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). (2021) The World’s Forgotten Fishes. Gland, Switzerland: WWF.Google Scholar
WWAP (UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme). (2019) The United Nations World Water Development Report 2019: Leaving No One Behind. Paris, France: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Xing, Y., Zhang, C., Fan, E. and Zhao, Y. (2016) Freshwater fishes of China: species richness, endemism, threatened species and conservation. Divers Distrib 22: 358–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ziv, G., Baran, E., Nam, S., Rodríguez-Iturbe, I. and Levin, S.A. (2012) Trading-off fish biodiversity, food security, and hydropower in the Mekong River Basin. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 109(15): 5609–5614.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed