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Journal of Threatened Taxa Building evidence for conservaton globally www.threatenedtaxa.org ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) Communication Freshwater fishes of Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Ghats of Karnataka, India Naren Sreenivasan, Neethi Mahesh & Rajeev Raghavan 26 January 2021 | Vol. 13 | No. 1 | Pages: 17470–17476 DOI: 10.11609/jot.6778.13.1.17470-17476 For Focus, Scope, Aims, Policies, and Guidelines visit htps://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/editorialPolicies#custom-0 For Artcle Submission Guidelines, visit htps://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions For Policies against Scientfc Misconduct, visit htps://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/about/editorialPolicies#custom-2 For reprints, contact <[email protected]> The opinions expressed by the authors do not refect the views of the Journal of Threatened Taxa, Wildlife Informaton Liaison Development Society, Zoo Outreach Organizaton, or any of the partners. 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Member Threatened Taxa Journal of Threatened Taxa | www.threatenedtaxa.org | 26 January 2021 | 13(1): 17470–17476 ISSN 0974-7907 (Online) | ISSN 0974-7893 (Print) PLATINUM OPEN ACCESS htps://doi.org/10.11609/jot.6778.13.1.17470-17476 #6778 | Received 05 October 2020 | Final received 28 December 2020 | Finally accepted 03 January 2021 COMMUNICATION Freshwater fshes of Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Ghats of Karnataka, India Naren Sreenivasan 1 , Neethi Mahesh 2 & Rajeev Raghavan 3 1 Wildlife Associaton of South India (WASI), #19 Victoria road, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560047, India. 2 4th block, Jayanagar, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560011, India. 3 Department of Fisheries Resource Management, Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies (KUFOS), Kochi, Kerala 682506, India. 1 [email protected] (corresponding author), 2 [email protected], 3 [email protected] Abstract: The ichthyofauna of Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary is comprised of 58 species belonging to 18 families and 44 genera of which close to 25% are endemic to the Western Ghats region, and eight are endemic to the Cauvery River system namely, Dawkinsia arulius, Dawkinsia rubrotnctus, Hypselobarbus dubius, H. micropogon, Kantaka brevidorsalis, Labeo kontus, Tor remadevii and Hemibagrus punctatus. Eight species found in Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary are threatened, including two (Tor remadevii and Hemibagrus punctatus) listed as ‘Critcally Endangered’, four species (Dawkinsia arulius, Hypselobarbus dubius, H. micropogon, and Silonia childreni) as ‘Endangered’ and two (Hyporhamphus xanthopterus and Wallago atu) as ‘Vulnerable’ on the IUCN Red List. Keywords: Diversity, freshwater fsh, mahseer, Western Ghats. Editor: Mandar Paingankar, Government Science College Gadchiroli, Gadchiroli, India. Date of publicaton: 26 January 2021 (online & print) Citaton: Sreenivasan, N., N. Mahesh & R. Raghavan (2021). Freshwater fshes of Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary, Western Ghats of Karnataka, India. Journal of Threat- ened Taxa 13(1): 17470–17476. htps://doi.org/10.11609/jot.6778.13.1.17470-17476 Copyright: © Sreenivasan et al. 2021. Creatve Commons Atributon 4.0 Internatonal License. JoTT allows unrestricted use, reproducton, and distributon of this artcle in any medium by providing adequate credit to the author(s) and the source of publicaton. Funding: All work was funded by volunteer members of the Wildlife Associaton of South India and the organisaton itself. Competng interests: The authors declare no competng interests. Author details: Naren Sreenivasan is a conservaton biologist working with the Wildlife Associaton of South India. His interest lie in working with communites to generate ecological data to inform management of freshwater ecosystems, especially in the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary. Neethi Mahesh is currently consultng with the Wildlife Conservaton Society to help develop a conservaton model for rivers. Rajeev Raghavan is interested in generatng informaton and developing methods to inform conservaton-decision making in tropical freshwater ecosystems. He is currently the South Asia Co-Chair of the IUCN SSC Freshwater Fish Specialist Group. Author contributon: NS—feld work, fsh identfcaton, manuscript writng, proof reading, NM—feld work, proof reading, images, RR—fsh identfcaton, literature review, manuscript writng, proof reading. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank the past and present PCCF (WL & HoFF) of Karnataka Forest Department, especially Mr. Sanjai Mohan (IFS) for permitng this research; Mr. Manoj Kumar (IFS), CCF Chamarajanagar; Dr. S. Ramesh, DCF Cauvery Wildlife Division; Mr. Ankraj, ACF Hannur and all the feld staf of the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary for their support; Rahul Kumar for his invaluable assistance in identfying many of the specimens in the feld; A.J.T. Johningh who has guided us in conserving river systems; the Governing council of the Wildlife Associaton of South India (2015–2019) for their support. WASI volunteers who have spent much of their resources on fsh conservaton are a huge support to building awareness for riverine conservaton. We look forward to their contnued partcipaton in the future. Last but not the least we thank Suresh, Das, Joseph, and Rudra, without their knowledge and expertse in catching fsh, this report would not have materialised. 17470 Freshwater fshes of Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary Sreenivasan et al. J TT INTRODUCTION anglers from around the world to the famous Cauvery fshing camps, managed by the Wildlife Associaton of The Cauvery River basin (81,155km2) is India’s fourth South India, and Jungle Lodges and Resorts (see Pinder largest, and also the largest river system draining the & Raghavan 2013; Pinder et al. 2015). southern part of peninsular India. The Cauvery River Except for informaton on 22 species of large originates from the Brahmagiri Hills of the Western mammals, 10 species of reptles, and 41 species of Ghats mountain ranges, and fows for a distance of birds provided in ofcial government documents 770km through the states of Karnataka (41%), Tamil (Management of Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary), there are Nadu (56%), and Kerala (3%) (Chidambaram et al. 2018), no organized checklists of the biodiversity of Cauvery fnally draining into the Bay of Bengal. Physiographically, WS. Recently, the Indian Grey Wolf (Kaggere 2020), the river is surrounded by the Western Ghats (in the and the Ratel/honey badger (Gubbi et al. 2014) were west) and Eastern Ghats mountain ranges (in the east and also recorded from the sanctuary. Recent interest in south) and the Tungabhadra and Pennar River systems in underwater photography led to the frst report of the the north (Chidambaram et al. 2018). Cauvery is one freshwater Jellyfsh Limnocnida indica from the Cauvery of the few rivers in the peninsular Indian region known WS (N. Sreenivasan, pers. comm. 5 August 2020), to receive rain from both the north-east and south- extending its known range within the river system, west monsoons (Raj 1941), and also the most exploited from previous records in Coorg and the Hemavathi river in the country in terms of water abstracton (95%) reservoir (Manna et al. 2005). The biodiversity status (Chidambaram et al. 2018). of the Cauvery WS documented in government records Ichthyological studies in the Cauvery dates back to is however considered an underestmate as anecdotal Jerdon (1849) who described several species from the reports document the presence of 280 species of main course of Cauvery River as well as various tributaries birds inside the sanctuary (Chandra 2014). Although including Bhavani and Kabini. Subsequently, major Cauvery WS is mentoned in a number of papers relatng exploratory studies (and subsequent compilatons) on to freshwater fsh conservaton (for e.g., Pinder & either the main river, or its tributaries were undertaken Raghavan 2013, Pinder et al. 2015, 2020), there is very by Day (1867a,b), Hora (1942), Chacko et al. (1954), litle informaton available on the diversity of freshwater Rajan (1955), Jayaram (1981), Jayaram et al. (1982), and fsh species inhabitng this protected area. Except Raghunathan (1989). Though no recent studies have for a study by Shenoy et al. (2003) who observed the been carried out to understand the fsh diversity of the occurrence of 18 species of fshes within a 5km stretch entre river system, available estmates suggest that of the river Cauvery inside the sanctuary between anywhere between 95 (Froese & Pauly 2019) and 142 Bheemeshwari (12.305°N & 77.285°E) and Mutathi species inhabit the Cauvery River basin (Jayaram 1981; (12.306°N & 77.311°E), there have been no atempts to Jayaram et al. 1982). This number could even be greater understand the fsh fauna of this protected area. given the recent taxonomic and nomenclatural changes, As part of a larger project aimed at conservaton as well as new species descriptons from the river system