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Freshwater Fish Diversity This project uses freshwater fishes as a biological model group for an integrated investigation of the ecological and evolutionary determinants of biodiversity patterns, at global and regional scales. A key aim is to investigate factors and understand the mechanisms that underlie patterns of biodiversity. The “freshwater fish” model is particularly well adapted to this type of study since rivers or lakes are separated from one another by barriers (oceans, or land) that are insurmountable for fish, and thus form kind of « biogeographic islands » whose space is perfectly delimited. The absence of migration between rivers or lakes over large temporal scales implies that extinction and speciation processes are specific of each river (or lake) basin. Incidentally, a considerable amount of exploitable data is now potentially available (we will get, for the first time, biological and environmental data on around 1000 river basins throughout the world) that enables the elaboration of highly accurate fishes diversity maps at the basin scale (which will serve for conservation purposes) and the use of comparative approaches to test the main ecological hypotheses currently under consideration. In order to do so, the project will cover three themes that underpin species diversity, namely, biogeography, environment, and life history and will allow the development of a conceptual framework viewing contemporary fish diversity as a product of a series of filters operating at different spatial and temporal scales. This approach will permit to formulate hypotheses concerning links between the observed structures and the processes involved. This framework will be used to generate accurate predictive models of fish diversity and to answer the questions that are currently being asked by society (in both industrialized and developing countries) including the spread of alien invasive species, and the effects of global climate changes and natural habitats fragmentation on the maintenance of this biodiversity. FAUNAFRI Project Contact: Didier Paugy « FAUNAFRI » is a free data resource aiming to pool and keep inventories (stocklists) of freshwater and brackish water fish species of Africa in a centralized geographic database. The application has been designed and produced by the Cartographic Sector of the IRD following a request of our research group, which collaborates with MNHN and « FishBase » consortium. This application offers many mapping, analysing and comparing fonctionnalities to study the geographic distribution of families, genus and species. Although FAUNAFRI is already accessible, it still in a developping format. The application won the 3rd price of the Geo-Online award of the Géoévenement 2008 in Paris and the 1rst jury special price at the International Geography Festival at Saint-Dié in 2008. FAUNAFRI is currently accessible at http://www.ird.fr/poissons-afrique/faunafri/  Database : Didier Paugy Cartography : Rainer Zaiss & Jean-Jacques Troubat Under Construction Comparative phylogeography of the african forested refuge zones Project Contact: Philippe Gaubert Under construction Adaptative radiation process – Study of the genus Orestias Project Contact: Philippe Gaubert & Bernard Hugueny Adaptive radiation has been defined as a fast increase of new species from one ancestral species, these new species being adapted to different habitats by the developpement of new morphological, physiological and behavioral traits compatible with the newly colonized habitats. Such a process seems to be in progress in the Altiplano lakes and affluents for the genus Orestias. This project aims to undertand the evolution of this group by focusing on their rapid speciation and the adaptive nature of their traits to thebiotic and abiotic features of their respective environements. The natural or human-induced temporal variability of the environment must be linked to the radiation process. An important sampling effort is being performed over the whole distribution range of the genus (Bolivian, Chilian and Peruvian Altiplano lakes and affluents). The diversity, abundance and biological traits will be related to the ecosystem functioning of the lakes. Related Institutions: UMSA (Bolivia) - Universidad de Chile... Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment Project (FADA) Supported by the Belgian Biodiversity Platform Project Coordinator: Estelle Balian Project contacts in our group: Christian Lévêque & Pablo A. Tedesco  Our team is involved in this broad scale intiative covering the whole freshwater fauna. Several projects have completed assessments of freshwater biodiversity but focused mainly on leading 'better-known' groups such as fish, or identified keystone species and/or endemic freshwater systems for conservation purposes. A few global initiatives have gathered available information on biodiversity of inland waters. However, our purpose is to complete these existing projects by providing an expert assessment of animal (species and generic) diversity in the continental (fresh)waters of the world by focusing on taxonomic and biogeographic diversity. Read more about FADA Under Construction Quality index for aquatic ecosystems of French Guyana Project Contact: Bernard de Mérona |
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