Human impacts on global freshwater fish biodiversity

Type Article
Date 2021-02
Language English
Author(s) Su GuohuanORCID1, Logez MaximeORCID2, 3, Xu Jun4, 5, Tao ShengliORCID1, Villéger SébastienORCID6, Brosse SébastienORCID1
Affiliation(s) 1 : Laboratoire Evolution et Diversité Biologique (EDB), UMR5174, Université Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier, CNRS, IRD, Toulouse, France.
2 : INRAE, Aix Marseille Univ, RECOVER, Aix-en-Provence, France.
3 : Pôle R&D “ECLA,” Aix-en-Provence, France.
4 : Donghu Experimental Station of Lake Ecosystems, State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology of China, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, P.R. China.
5 : Laboratory for Marine Fisheries Science and Food Production Processes, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao, P.R. China.
6 : MARBEC, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, Ifremer, IRD, Montpellier, France.
Source Science (0036-8075) (American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)), 2021-02 , Vol. 371 , N. 6531 , P. 835-838
DOI 10.1126/science.abd3369
WOS© Times Cited 208
Abstract

Freshwater fish represent one-fourth of the world’s vertebrates and provide irreplaceable goods and services but are increasingly affected by human activities. A new index, Cumulative Change in Biodiversity Facets, revealed marked changes in biodiversity in >50% of the world’s rivers covering >40% of the world’s continental surface and >37% of the world’s river length, whereas <14% of the world’s surface and river length remain least impacted. Present-day rivers are more similar to each other and have more fish species with more diverse morphologies and longer evolutionary legacies. In temperate rivers, where the impact has been greatest, biodiversity changes were primarily due to river fragmentation and introduction of non-native species.

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