Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/L009005/1
Assessing human impacts on fish communities from the biodiversity hotspot Lake Tanganyika
Training Grant Award
- Lead Supervisor:
- Professor J Day, University College London, Genetics Evolution and Environment
- Grant held at:
- University College London, Genetics Evolution and Environment
- Science Area:
- Freshwater
- Overall Classification:
- Freshwater
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Global Change
- Science Topics:
- None
- Abstract:
- Habitat loss is the leading cause of species extinction and is principally driven by land use change from increases in urbanisation and agriculture. Despite this, our knowledge of how communities respond to anthropogenic disturbances remains poor. For example, does decreasing habitat quality have the same effect on clades with differing biologies and life histories? What is the contribution of rare species to functional diversity in degraded habitats? Does niche breadth broaden with fewer species competing for resources? As the decline and/or extinction of species has the potential to dramatically alter ecosystem functioning it is vital to better understand the processes influencing community structure so that we can begin to predict community responses to future environmental change. This can be addressed by the integration of community ecology and phylogenetics, an emerging discipline, incorporating diverse data to evaluate the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that influence current patterns of biological diversity. Here we propose applying a phylogenetic community ecology framework to investigate the Lake Tanganyika (LT) ecosystem to specifically test the impacts of anthropogenic disturbances on LT's hyper-diverse littoral fish communities in a collaboration between the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and UCL. Maintaining the unique LT ecosystem is crucial, as it is increasingly threatened from anthropogenic activities including over-fishing, climate change; and sedimentation caused by watershed deforestation that can detrimentally affect habitat quality and heterogeneity, foraging, respiration, reproductive success and alter predator-prey and host-parasite interactions. Previous local studies investigating species diversity of LTs littoral habitats (the most diverse zone extending to 15m) indicate lower diversity at sites in which sedimentation loading from deforestation has occurred. However, while measuring species diversity is a logical starting point, it conveys little or no information regarding the evolutionary history of functional diversity of the focal system; e.g. how various clades contribute to current diversity. It is therefore surprising that a more detailed and expansive examination of littoral fish communities has not been undertaken incorporating all major watershed land uses (e.g. protected, deforested, urban). We select cichlid fishes as our proposed study system as they represent a dominant component of the littoral zone (65% of ~200 LT cichlid species) and are well suited for studies investigating phylo-community ecology because species have a relatively long history of interaction and co-evolution and importantly phylogenies are near complete and well resolved. Cichlids are also an easy target group to apply cost and time efficient camera survey technology (providing information on alpha diversity) since they are diurnal, not secretive, identifiable and stenotopic. A significant contribution of this study will be advances in the analysis of these data through development of novel computer recognition technology that will be highly beneficial for conservation ecologists. Furthermore, despite the significant focus on cichlids as a model evolutionary system, no study of African great lake ecosystems has attempted to apply the powerful approach of phylogenetic beta diversity (PDB), which measures shared phylogenetic history among communities allowing the connection of local processes (e.g. environmental filtering) with more regional processes (e.g. trait evolution, speciation), to test the effects of habitat degradation on community structure. The results of this study will offer new insights into if protected areas not only support species richness, but also all components of biodiversity e.g. evolutionary and functional (trait) diversity, and will provide urgent information on rare and threatened species that will feed directly into ZSL's global conservation program.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/L009005/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- DTG - directed
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Industrial CASE
This training grant award has a total value of £91,515
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Total - Fees | Total - RTSG | Total - Student Stipend |
|---|---|---|
| £16,226 | £11,000 | £64,292 |
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