| Abstrakt: |
Current status and distributional patterns of fish fauna of Pir Panjal Himalayan region are poorly explored, and research on habitat ecology and species composition along different habitat of river Poonch is still deficient. The current study was undertaken to update the status and distributional pattern of ichthyofauna of this river. The study was conducted from June 2017 to December 2019. A total of 25 fish species were documented from different sampling sites, which belong to four orders, six families and fifteen genera. The Renyi diversity profiles show that the lower and middle stretch had rich species diversity as compared to the upper stretch, with highest at Sher-e-Kashmir Bridge (lower stretch) and lowest at Bufflaiz (upper stretch). The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) results show a considerable variation in the total fish species composition as well as the water quality parameter among the studied sites. The distributional pattern of fish species showed significant variation in their dominance with respect to different sampling sites, indicating the supremacy of the family Cyprinidae (64%) followed by Sisoridae (16%) then by Cobitidae (8%). In contrast, the other three families, Nemachalidae, Salmonidae and Mastacembelidae, contribute only (4%) each, respectively. Significant variation in abundance of the species was recorded across all the site, as the least number of species have been encountered from Bufflaiz and the highest was recorded at the Sher-e-Kashmir bridge site. About 16% species were found common to the entire habitat, while 32% species were restricted to only single habitat. The result of the current study will provide the information needed for freshwater fish resource protection in river Poonch and a reference for promoting the conservation and management of fish diversity of the river. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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