Fish as Ecological Health Indicators of Freshwater Ecosystems

Abstract

Aquatic ecosystems, especially freshwater resources, face many anthropogenic stressors such as pollution, habitat destruction, flow alterations etc leading to impairment in ecological health of the systems. Conservationists need ecological indicators showing the level of alterations or impairment for decision making in managing these important resources. Fish are widely used as sentinel species to evaluate ecological health and are excellent indicators of overall health of aquatic systems they inhabit. This article focuses on briefing some reliable and useful approaches in assessing the ecosystem health in which fishes are used as indicator organism. Many of those approaches need to be refined for each geographical area and type of water body for use as effective biological monitoring tool.