Abstract
The regional climate has significantly warmed with erratically declining annual rainfall and intensified downpour within a narrower span of monsoon months, which led to an increased trophic state (≈algae) in most inland waters. Freshwater clupeids vitally control the aquatic food chain by grazing on algae. Despite increasing food availability, IUCN Red List® revealed 16 freshwater clupeids with a decreasing population trend. We investigated one such species’ reproductive dependencies, Gudusia chapra (Indian river shad), in the lower Gangetic drainage (India) under a mixed context of climate change and overfishing. Monthly rainfall (≥ 60–100 mm) and water temperature (≥ 31–32 °C) are key breeding cues for females. The regional climate seems inclined to fulfill these through the significant part of the breeding season, and indeed the species has maintained consistent breeding phenology over 20 years. Other breeding thresholds relevant to fishing include size at first maturity (≥ 6.8 cm; reduced by ~ 25–36%) and pre-spawning girth (Girthspawn50 ≥ 7 cm; first record). Girthspawn50 is a proxy of the minimum mesh size requirement of fishing nets to allow safe passage of “gravid” females (+ 22% bulged abdomen) and breed. The operational fishing nets (3–10 cm mesh) probably have been indulged in indiscriminative fishing of gravid females for generations. Under a favorably changing climate and food availability, existing evidence suggests a fishery-induced evolution in regional females (to circumvent such mesh sizes) through earlier maturation/puberty at smaller sizes. It could be an early warning sign of population collapse (smaller females → lessening fecundity → fewer offspring). Overfishing seemed to be a bigger threat than climate change.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the Director, ICAR-Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute, Barrackpore. The financial help of Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi (ICAR) for funding in the project National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) is gratefully acknowledged for this study. The second and joint author separately acknowledges the funds from Projects CENAKVA (LM2018099), Biodiversity (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_025/0007370) for supporting him during manuscript preparation. The authors gratefully acknowledge the help of anonymous reviewers for improving this article.
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The Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi (ICAR) funded the present study (financial support 100%) under the project National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA).
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Conceptualization: UKS, KR; methodology: MN, UKS, KR; formal analysis and visualization KR; investigation: GK, MP, UKS, LL, SB, SK, BDG; data collection and curation: SB, BDG, GK, MP, LL; writing - original draft preparation: KR; writing - review and editing: UKS; funding acquisition: UKS, BKD; resources: UKS, BKD; supervision: UKS.
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The study was a part of the national project (Government of India) – project NICRA (National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture) through Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).
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Sarkar, U.K., Roy, K., Karnatak, G. et al. Reproductive environment of the decreasing Indian river shad in Asian inland waters: disentangling the climate change and indiscriminative fishing threats. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 30207–30218 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12852-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12852-7