TROPHIC ECOLOGY OF TROPICAL RESERVOIR COMMUNITIES

Abstract

Freshwater habitats make up only 0.8% of the earth’s surface, yet they harbour 6% of all described species. In the face of intensifying environmental (e.g., climate change) and socio-economic pressures, freshwater biodiversity faces a plethora of challenges or threats, such as over-fishing, river-damming, and biological invasions. In understudied ecosystems, the absence of sufficient ecological knowledge may hinder mitigation measures, thus exacerbating deleterious effects stemming from anthropogenic activity.

Tropical lentic habitats, the focus of this thesis, typify understudied ecosystems. This study therefore focusses on elucidating the ecology of reservoir communities using both broad and focused approaches. With a broad approach, I first characterised the change in fish communities following the construction of reservoirs by conducting a global meta-analysis. Results from the meta-analysis show that net fish richness and abundance did not change significantly post-damming alth