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Dispersal of fish eggs and larvae in a cascade of small hydropower plants with fish ladders

  • PERSPECTIVES ON SUSTAINABLE HYDRO-POWER
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Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate fish eggs and larvae dispersal in a river stretch influenced by small hydropower plants in Southeast Brazil. The main hypothesis is that the downstream dispersal of free-flowing eggs and larvae is likely to occur given the small size of the studied reservoirs and that passage through the dam may occur, with the fish ladder contributing to it. Eggs and larvae were collected fortnightly, between November 2016 and February 2017, from locations upstream of two dams, including lotic, transition and lentic zones. Additional samples were collected inside the fish ladders at each dam. Downstream dispersal of eggs and larvae was influenced by a combination of rainfall/flow variation and stage of the reproductive cycle, with the peak of rainfall during the summer coinciding with higher abundances. Under these conditions, eggs and larvae drifted downstream through the reservoirs and reached the dams. Once in the dam, they could pass through the fish ladder. This passage was correlated with larval density in the reservoir immediately upstream, although at very low densities compared with the other sampling sites located upstream of the fish ladders.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the funding agency Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) for scholarship conceived for the first author. Staff of the dam sites are thanked for helping to provide access to the experimental facilities. We also acknowledged the three anonymous reviewers and the associated guest editor, Eduardo Martins, for their valuable comments and criticisms that significantly contributed to improve the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Zoologia, Instituto de Biociências, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências Biológicas (Zoologia), Universidade Estadual Paulista, Botucatu, SP, Brazil

    Eduardo Meneguzzi Brambilla & Marcos Gomes Nogueira

  2. Institute of Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, Albury, NSW, Australia

    Eduardo Meneguzzi Brambilla, Luiz G. M. Silva & Lee J. Baumgartner

  3. Stocker Lab, Institute of Environmental Engineering, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Luiz G. M. Silva

  4. Núcleo de Pesquisas em Limnologia, Ictiologia e Aquicultura, Programa de Pós-graduação em Ecologia de Ambientes Aquáticos Continentais, Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Maringá, PR, Brazil

    Andréa Bialetzki

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  1. Eduardo Meneguzzi Brambilla
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Brambilla, E.M., Silva, L.G.M., Baumgartner, L.J. et al. Dispersal of fish eggs and larvae in a cascade of small hydropower plants with fish ladders. Hydrobiologia 849, 339–356 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-020-04425-5

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