Abstract:

As one of the important reaches of the Dongting Lake maintaining a connection with the mainstream of the Yangtze River，the Lishui River is an important and valuable river for maintaining or providing the fish resource of the Dongting Lake To evaluating the current status of fishery resource of the Lishui River in Hunan province，we surveyed the river during April to August of 2010 and September to December of 2011 20 sampling sites were selected in the river basin including the upper reaches in Sangzhi，the middle reaches in Cili and Shimen，and the lower reaches in Lixian and Jinshi A total of 95 fish species were collected，belonging to 8 orders，19 families and 59 genera Among them，one specie was new record in Hunan province and 4 species were introduced to the river basin Cyprinids were dominant，accounting for 5053% of the total species Species richness and diversity index were used to analyze the characteristics of the fish communities The results showed that the diversity and the uniformity of fish community in the Lishui River was good On spatial distribution，the species richness increased  from the upper to the lower section and the diversity indices also raised obviously The similarity and cluster analysis showed that fish assemblages of the Lishui River could be distinguished as three cluster，upriver cluster，middle reach cluster and downriver cluster The Jaccard similarity coefficient showed that the fish communities of the upper section were highly similar to those at the middle section，and moderately dissimilar to those at the lower section There was higher similarity degree of the fish communities between the middle section and the upper section，and lower similarity degree between the middle section and the lower section With regard to ecological type，fish communities in the Lishui River showed diversification types such as migratory，feeding and perching habit Despite the species of the catches in various sections were different，the main species of the catches were lakesettlement fishes such as Cyprinus carpio，Carassius auratus， Culter alburnus，Culter mongolicus，Silurus asotus，Pelteobagrus fulvidraco，Hemiculter leucisculus， Squalidus argentatus，etc，or mountainstream fishes such as Cobitis sinensis， Rhinogobius giurinus， etc The ratio of migratory species such as four major Chinese carps was extremely low，and the commercial fishes showed miniaturization significantly These phenomena were mainly caused by the hydraulic projects and overfishing Some suggestions for the protection of the fish resources of the Lishui River were put forward.