Authors: Jian Gao Zhengwen Liu Erik Jeppesen
Publish Date: 2013/11/05
Volume: 724, Issue: 1, Pages: 127-140
Abstract
While the effects of lake restoration by fish manipulation are wellstudied in the temperate zone comparatively little information is available on this issue from tropical lakes It may be expected that fish removal leads to faster recovery of the fish stock here than in temperate lakes due to more frequent and earlier reproduction which may in turn delay positive effects of the restoration We studied the community composition feeding type and abundance of fish in three basins of a tropical shallow lake one unrestored basin UR and two basins restored by fish manipulation and transplantation of submerged macrophytes While omnibenthivorous fish dominated the biomass in the restored basins 3 and 5 years after restoration planktivores were most abundant in the UR although total fish biomass remained similar Oneway analyses of similarities based on fish species presence/absence abundance and biomass data revealed significant differences in fish community composition among the restored basins and UR and redundancy analyses further indicated that submerged macrophytes were a key driver behind this difference Our results indicate that active implantation of submerged macrophytes to stabilise the fish community is a tool to consider when planning lake restoration by biomanipulation in the tropicsThe authors thank Ping Zhong Xiufeng Zhang Jinlei Yu Fengwen Wang Binghui Chen Min Zhou Xiao Yu Shen Xu Xiaohong Wu Teng Miao Ruyan Yue Jinrun Hu Dongmei Cheng Huan Li Weimin Rao Xuefeng Zhao and Ming Wang for field and laboratory support and Anne Mette Poulsen for language assistance This study was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China No 2012CB956100 the National Foundation of Science of China Nos U1033602 and 41073057 and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities EJ is supported by the EU FP7 project REFRESH Adaptive strategies to Mitigate the Impacts of Climate Change on European Freshwater Ecosystems Contract No 244121 ‘CLEAR’ a Villum Kann Rasmussen Centre of Excellence project CRES and CIRCE
Keywords: