RESEARCH PROPOSAL FOR Ph.D.

STUDY

A Research Proposal Submitted to the “Department of Natural

Sciences” for the Ph.D. Degree in Macquarie University

Submitted to:

Dr. Adam Stow

Associate Professor

School of Natural Sciences

Submitted By

Ramla Shahroz

MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY SYDNEY,

AUSTRALIA

DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY (NATURAL

SCIENCES)

SCHOOL OF NATURAL SCIENCES

Title: Ecological and conservation strategies of amphibian and
different fish species
Introduction:

Despite freshwater making up less than 1% of the Earth's surface, freshwater fish account
for one-fourth of all vertebrate species. Being particularly susceptible to human modifications
brought about by the introduction of new species, overexploitation, fragmentation, degradation
of continental watercourses, and climate change, they rank among the most threatened
vertebrates. Additionally, due to the unique features of their aquatic environments and their
evolutionary isolation, freshwater fish exhibit high levels of endemism; their extinction could
have disastrous effects. Because of biases in conservation research and management towards
more charismatic species, knowledge about the ecology and conservation status of freshwater
fish is less than that of terrestrial vertebrates. To effectively manage freshwater ecosystems,
research into the ecological topics, environmental requirements, and pressures facing freshwater
fish is thought to be essential. Freshwater fish conservation biology continues to place a high
priority on comprehending these environmental features.

The distribution of fish communities in the Alto Madre de Dios River, a little-studied
Andean–Amazon watershed in southern Peru, is examined by Tobes et al. in relation to
environmental variables. The findings indicate a notable change in fish diversity with respect to
altitude, demarcating headwater and middle-lowland communities. Given this scenario, which
implies that no region of the Andean-Amazon Basin will remain unaffected, the basin under
study still maintains healthy ecosystems and exhibits overall excellent environmental quality.
Because of this, the basin is ideal to act as a reference basin for these threatened ecosystems.
Schmitter-Soto et al. examine changes in a fish community over an extended period of time,
from 2015–2018 to 1999–2001. The findings suggest that morphological alterations in the
channel may be the cause of the changes. Additional risks that could influence these alterations
include illicit fishing beyond the bay's boundaries and internal erosion that affects natural
ecosystems. Li et al. examine the habitat needs, fish distribution, and influencing factors in the
East Tiaoxi River, a significant tributary of the well-known Yangtze River.
 The outcomes reveal disparities in the way fish are managed as well as multiple serious
threats to their survival. The Yangtze River Basin needs comprehensive and ongoing scientific
research on fish diversity in order to create effective conservation and restoration plans. It is
commonly known that a variety of stressors, including diseases, pollutants, competition and
predation from both native and non-native species, climate change, overexploitation, and habitat
modification, are responsible for the declines in amphibian populations (Egea-Serrano et al.,
2012; Grant et al., 2016; Blackburn et al., 2019). The reasons behind amphibian declines are
multifaceted due to the compounding effects of interacting stressors (Hayes et al., 2010;
Blaustein et al., 2011).

Historically, research on the declines in amphibian populations has not taken into account
this complexity, instead concentrating on individual factors (like disease) that impact specific
amphibian species (Blaustein et al., 2011). Multidisciplinary approaches are ideally suited to
unravel this complexity due to their interactive nature. They can reveal pathways towards
creating conservation solutions and reveal the physiological, behavioural, and other mechanisms
behind population declines and extirpations. According to Brito (2008), amphibian species in
North America are the most studied in the world, but little is known about how different species
react to habitat loss brought on by urbanisation. There are uncertainties because the majority of
research to date has only found negative relationships between urbanisation and amphibians; it
has not conclusively established a connection between response variables like abundance or
species richness and predictive urban metrics. More significantly, research on the ecology of
urban amphibians is not widely conducted and recent studies. It does not fully address the lack of
information regarding several key areas of amphibian ecology such as terrestrial habitat
availability, habitat use and selection, species-specific responses to urbanization, and amphibian
movements and dispersal in urban landscapes. Such gaps in our knowledge impair our capacity
to devise conservation strategies to reverse or prevent declines.

Human settlement in high biodiversity areas is a major challenge to conservation efforts.

Near human settlements, conservation becomes an expensive endeavor due to rising land prices,
which are generally correlated with increased human population density (Luck et al. 2004).
Objectives:

 Role of human activities in Habitat destruction in fishes and amphibian

 Limitations of conservation practice in urban areas where land is scarce and expensive.
 Role of variety of stressors, including diseases, pollutants, competition and predation
from both native and non-native species, climate change, overexploitation, and habitat
modification, are responsible for the declines in amphibian as well as fishes population

Expected Outcomes:

We expect that the basic knowledge obtained from this study will help to improve our
understanding of the mechanism linking the extinction, conservation and preservation of their
genetic data in response to be useful for other such kind of discoveries in the coming future.

Reference

Manubens, J.; Comas, O.; Valls, N.; Benejam, L. First Captive Breeding Program for the
Endangered Pyrenean Sculpin (Cottus hispaniolensis Bacescu-Master, 1964). Water 2020, 12,
2986.

Gebremedhin, S.; Bekaert, K.; Getahun, A.; Bruneel, S.; Anteneh, W.; Goethals, P. Torreele
Comparison of Otolith Readability and Reproducibility of Counts of Translucent Zones
Using Different Otolith Preparation Methods for Four Endemic Labeobarbus Species in
Lake Tana, Ethiopia. Water 2019, 11, 1336. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef][Green Version]

Walls, S. C., & Gabor, C. R. (2019). Integrating behavior and physiology into strategies for
amphibian conservation. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 7, 234.

Scheffers, B. R., & Paszkowski, C. A. (2012). The effects of urbanization on North American
amphibian species: Identifying new directions for urban conservation. Urban
Ecosystems, 15, 133-147.