Abstract
Crossings between roads and streams can negatively affect fish, especially when culverts prevent free movement along the stream. Understanding this effect is essential to design structures that can mitigate the impact of roads on fishes. Here, we used a capture-recapture study and multi-state open population models to investigate the influence of a culvert on the movement probability of the armored catfish Rineloricaria aequalicuspis, a small benthic species (maximum total body length ca. 190 mm) endemic to streams in southern Brazil. Additionally, we tested whether environmental variables and body size affect movement probability through the culvert. Fish sampling and environmental data collection were carried out during 2016 and 2017, both in a stream section crossed by a road and in the adjacent free-flowing stream sections upstream and downstream. Movement probability was higher within free stream sections than through the culvert. Water depth in the culvert positively influenced movement probability, whereas body size was not related to movement through the road-stream crossing. Our results indicate that the culvert hinders free movement of R. aequalicuspis and that approximately 30 cm of water depth inside the culvert results in an eightfold increase in passage probability. These results extend the evidence that culverts affect fish movement in streams, even for non-migratory, relatively small species adapted to environments with natural obstacles. This indicates the need to design road-stream crossings that are more favorable to fish movement, especially in streams crossed by roads at multiple sites.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank A. Flores, A. Luza, C. Jacobi, C. Pott, E. Mello, F. Rodrigues, M. Dalmolin, P. Paludo, R. Dala-Corte and T. Guimarães for their assistance with fieldwork. We thank V. Debastiani for help with scripting in R, and I. Brack and M. Abadie for help with Mark statistical software. A. Kindel, F. Z. Teixeira, I. P. Coelho, R. Dala-Corte, R. M. Silvano, R. Mazzoni and U. H. Schulz provided helpful suggestions to an earlier version of the manuscript. Fish sampling was done according to the ethics committee protocol (CEUA-UFRGS; # 35291). L. De Fries received a grant from CAPES.
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All procedures performed in the study involving fish were permitted by Ministério do Meio Ambiente—MMA, Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade—ICMBIO, Sistema de Autorização e Informação da Biodiversidade—SISBIO, collecting permit #10650, in the name of Fernando Gertum Becker. This research was also approved by the ethics committee protocol of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (CEUA-UFRGS; #35291).
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De Fries, L., Camana, M., Guimarães, M. et al. Road crossings hinder the movement of a small non-migratory stream fish. Environ Biol Fish 106, 1295–1311 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-023-01416-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-023-01416-y