Collecting fishes in remote rural MalawiAdvancing effort to barcode all fishes of southern Africa
By Tuuli Mäkinen *
This was no ordinary fishing trip. Recently, Denis Tweddle, an honorary research associate with the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity (SAIAB), led a collection expedition to the remote rivers of southern Malawi as part of the institute’s FISH-BOL Africa project to barcode all the freshwater fish species of southern Africa.
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Tweddle, an expert on Southern African fishes who has sampled the Malawi sites in the past, says that the rural region’s aquatic ecosystems reflect the impact of a rapidly increasing population and the accompanying massive land use changes.
The collection team sampled fishes from the Shire, Bua and Ruo rivers and their tributaries, concentrating on the streams around the impressively scenic Mount Mulanje. Some of these locations are in hard-to-reach rural areas that have not been studied for decades.
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The SAIAB group was joined by local scientists Amulike Msukwa and Msekiwa Matsimbe, from Bunda College of Agriculture, University of Malawi, who collected information on fish species distribution. Carl Bruessow of the Mulanje Mountain Conservation Trust provided valuable assistance and local knowledge.
The team collected more than 300 individuals representing at least 32 fish taxa and a smaller number of amphibians, crabs and aquatic insects. Tissue samples were sent for barcoding at the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding in Guelph. Specimens were preserved and taken to the SAIAB laboratory in Grahamstown, South Africa, where identifications were confirmed. The specimens will be stored in the SAIAB collection as vouchers.
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SAIAB is one of the leading institutions in the FISH-BOL Africa initiative to barcode all of the freshwater fish species in Southern Africa. Barcoding the samples from Malawi will be especially important, since the biodiversity of river fishes in Malawi has been little studied and is now threatened by habitat loss.
* Tuuli Mäkinen is a post-doctoral student employed by SAIAB under the project Engaging Developing Nations in the International Barcode of Life Project . The three-year project has a total budget of more than $2 million and is funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The other countries in the project are Argentina, Peru, Costa Rica and Kenya.
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