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Diversity of freshwater fishes of the Kherem river, a tributary of Noa-Dihing river of Brahmaputra Basin in the Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh, India

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Author Affiliations

  • 1Department of Zoology, Dera Natung Government College, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh-791113, India
  • 2Department of Zoology, Dera Natung Government College, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh-791113, India
  • 3Department of Zoology, Dera Natung Government College, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh-791113, India
  • 4Department of Zoology, Dera Natung Government College, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh-791113, India

Int. Res. J. Biological Sci., Volume 14, Issue (3), Pages 17-25, August,10 (2025)

Abstract

The present study was carried out on 17th of October 2022, in one section of the Kherem river in Changlang district of Arunachal Pradesh in an attempt to document the fish faunal diversity in this section of the river. The river forms an important tributary of Noa-Dihing which debouches into the Brahmaputra. The fish sampling was done from one site (273235.89 N and 955622.12 E) occurring at an elevation of 153m. The study documented the occurrence of 21 species belonging to 5 orders, 13 families and 15 genera. Order Cypriniformes and Anabantiformes were the most diverse followed by Siluriformes and least were order Sybranchiformes and Gobiiformes. Further species wise, family Cyprinidae and Badidae emerged as the most dominant with 3 species each (15%). Succeeded by 2 species each (10%) in the family of Cobitidae, Bagridae, Channidae and Osphronemidae. Others like Danionidae, Xenocyprididae, Clariidae, Heteropneustidae, Synbranchidae, Gobiidae and Anabantidae were among the least diverse family with 1 species each (5%). The study also recorded the presence of an exotic carp species Ctenopharyngodon idella from Kherem river which might have swum its way from the fishery ponds nearby. According to IUCN red list as many as 19 0ut of 21 species reported were under least concerned (90%) category and 2 under Not evaluated (10% ) category (Table-1). The Simpson index and Shannon index incorporated to quantify the fish diversity were recorded to be 0.9404 and 2.943 respectively. The evenness index added upto a near perfect score of 0.9037 indicating an even distribution of species at the study site.

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