dry-season-fish-populations-in-shire-valley-game-reserve-1976
Latest version published by Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi on May 31, 2022
The diversity of fish fauna in water system is determined by the variety of habitats available within that system. As a result permanent lakes and ponds; rivers and streams all have different fauna. The requirement of the animals in the three Lower Shire Game Reserves are met by three very different water systems.
The Wankulumadziriver, a permanent stream, flows through the northern part of Majete Game Reserve and the Shire River forms its eastern boundary. There are two artificial waterholes in Lengwe, supplied by boreholes where as Mwabvi has several rivers which flow for short periods during the rains, leaving isolated waterholesin the river bedsin the dry season. As a result of these differences, considerable variations in the species composition of the fish populations in the reserves would be expected.
In 1975 the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Kindly gave the Fisheries Department permission to sample in the reserves and this resource is a brief account of the findings.
Data Records
The data in this occurrence resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 13 records.
This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.
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Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:
| Data as a DwC-A file | download 13 records in English (6 KB) - Update frequency: as needed |
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| Metadata as an EML file | download in English (16 KB) |
| Metadata as an RTF file | download in English (12 KB) |
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How to cite
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Tweddle D, Willoughby N (2018): dry-season-fish-populations-in-shire-valley-game-reserve-1976. v1.2. Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi. Dataset/Occurrence. http://196.32.215.240:8081/ipt/resource?r=dry-season-fish-populations-in-shire-valley-game-reserve-1976&v=1.2
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The publisher and rights holder of this work is Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 License.
GBIF Registration
This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 4c42a3cc-b7f3-42b9-a4af-6535b3e75bbd. Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by GBIF Malawi.
Keywords
Checklist; dry season; fish population; shire valley; lake malawi; wesm; nyala; ; Derivedfromoccurrence
Contacts
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Geographic Coverage
The sample water sources where basically in the southern region of Malawi
| Bounding Coordinates | South West [-17.162, 34.211], North East [-13.859, 36.057] |
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Taxonomic Coverage
The resource has all the dry season fish identified to order, family and genus
| Genus | Oreochromis, Anguilla, Clarias, Chiloglanis, Labeo, Opsaridium, Labeo, Amphilius, Astatotilapia, Oreochromis, Barbus, Protomelas, Enteromius |
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Temporal Coverage
| Start Date | 1975-01-01 |
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Project Data
The project is about mobilizing and publishing biodiversity data to be accessible to the public and decision makers
| Title | Enhancing accessibility of Biodiversity Data in Malawi |
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| Identifier | African Biodiversity Challenge 2018 |
| Funding | JRS Foundation |
| Study Area Description | Wamkulumadzi river: width 2-7m and average depth of 0.3 Junction Shire River and Wankulumadzi River: width of Wankulumadzi up to 30m. Backwater of Shire River, sandy bottom 2-3m wide and up to 1m deep. Above Kapichira Falls: rock pool, sandy bottom, overhanging rocks, strong current in places. Depth up to 2m. |
The personnel involved in the project:
Sampling Methods
The cathode remained completely immersed in water while the handheld anode was controlled by the operator. On the immersion of the anode to complete the circuit, fish in a 1-2m radius were attracted to it, stunned and collected with a deep net. When the electric field was broken by the removal of the anode from the water stunned fish remained in the water recovered rapidly and swam away unharmed. The fish from each sampling site were sorted into species, counted and weighed. Fish of unknown species were retained for identification later. Small numbers of fish from each sampling site were retained to examine stomach contents and sexual condition, the reminder being returned to the water alive. The electrical conductivity of the water was measured at each site. This gives an indication of the amount of dissolved salts present, an important consideration since the efficiency of electrofishing depends upon the conductivity of the water. Electrofishing is inefficient in streams such as those on Zomba plateau where conductivities as low as 7uS/cm occur, but is very efficient in the saline waters of Lake Chilwa where conductivities of 16,000uS/cm were recorded in 1968, just before the lake dried up. The conductivity of Lake Malawi is 220uS/cm and of the Shire River was between 230 and 240uS/cm.
| Study Extent | Majete Game Reserve Wamkulumadzi river: width 2-7m and average depth of 0.3 Junction Shire River and Wankulumadzi River: width of Wankulumadzi up to 30m. Backwater of Shire River, sandy bottom 2-3m wide and up to 1m deep. Above Kapichira Falls: rock pool, sandy bottom, overhanging rocks, strong current in places. Depth up to 2m. Lengwe National Park Prior to the sinking of the two boreholes to provide permanent water supplies for the large Nyala population which is the main attraction in this park, there was no permanent water in Lengwe. Although the waterholes had been in existence since 1966 and 1970, no fish were present in either pool. Neither waterhole is connected with any stream system from which colonisation might be expected to occur. The waterholes were very shallow and saline making it difficult for vulnerable fish eggs and larval to survive. Mwabvi Game Reserve The electrofishing equipment was used to sample three pools in the bed of the Thangadzi River, one in gorge in the bed of the Mwabvi River and one isolated waterhole, Njule. During the rainy season the Mwabvi river flows into Thangadzi River which later joins Shire River.Two habitat which were inaccessible to the electrofishing apparatus were sampled with hands and a dip net. There were a pool in the bed of the Mwabvi river upstream of the gorge and a small spring in the bed of the Dande river, which flows into the Thangadzi river near the junction with the Shire River during the wet season. |
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Method step description:
- The fish populations of the three reserves were considered separately and then compared later on.The common English and Chichewa names of fish were given in brackets after the scientific names when these were first mentioned in the text. A list of publications dealing with fishes of Malawi were given in the bibliography.
Additional Metadata
| Alternative Identifiers | 4c42a3cc-b7f3-42b9-a4af-6535b3e75bbd |
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| http://196.32.215.240:8081/ipt/resource?r=dry-season-fish-populations-in-shire-valley-game-reserve-1976 |