Fish Biodiversity and Conservation in South America
Journal of Fish Biology (2016) 89, 12–47 doi:10.1111/jfb.13016, available online at wileyonlinelibrary.com Fish biodiversity and conservation in South America R. E. Reis*†, J. S. Albert‡, F. Di Dario§, M. M. Mincarone§, P. Petry‖ and L. A. Rocha¶ *PUCRS, Laboratory of Vertebrate Systematics, Av. Ipiranga, 6681, 90619-900 Porto Alegre, Brazil, ‡University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70504-2451, U.S.A., §Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Núcleo em Ecologia e Desenvolvimento Socioambiental de Macaé (NUPEM), Grupo de Sistemática e Biologia Evolutiva, Caixa Postal 119331, 27910-970, Macaé, RJ, Brazil, ‖Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, 26 Oxford St Cambridge, MA, 02138, U.S.A. and ¶Section of Ichthyology, California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Dr, San Francisco, CA 94118, U.S.A. The freshwater and marine fish faunas of South America are the most diverse on Earth, with current species richness estimates standing above 9100 species. In addition, over the last decade at least 100 species were described every year. There are currently about 5160 freshwater fish species, and the estimate for the freshwater fish fauna alone points to a final diversity between 8000 and 9000 species. South America also has c. 4000 species of marine fishes. The mega-diverse fish faunas of South Amer- ica evolved over a period of >100 million years, with most lineages tracing origins to Gondwana and the adjacent Tethys Sea. This high diversity was in part maintained by escaping the mass extinctions and biotic turnovers associated with Cenozoic climate cooling, the formation of boreal and temperate zones at high latitudes and aridification in many places at equatorial latitudes.
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