Yifeng Chen

• Chinese Academy of Sciences

Freshwater biodiversity is increasingly imperilled by human activities, with dam construction posing significant threats to fish communities. Species composition changes through introductions and extinctions have been widely reported, yet the long-term consequences of cascade dam construction on multiple facets of biodiversity remain poorly underst...

As predators are generally larger than their prey, positive body size and trophic position relationships are typically assumed, and these relationships have helped in estimating and predicting the effects of global environmental change on the trophic dynamics of aquatic ecosystems. However, current efforts to confirm the generality of body size-tro...

Mercury biomagnification in aquatic ecosystems is a global issue. Biomagnification patterns and drivers in alpine regions remain poorly understood. Hg biomagnification in the aquatic food web of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (Q-T Plateau) was investigated. A total of 302 fish and macroinvertebrate tissue samples were analysed for total mercury (THg)...

The goldfish Carassius auratus complex is one of the most successfully invasive fish species on the Tibetan Plateau. However, little is known about the ploidy distribution of the invasive populations and their evolutionary dynamics. Here, using mitochondrial D-loop and eight microsatellites, we evaluated the genetic diversity and population structu...

Anthropogenic biological invasions represent major concerns but enable us to investigate rapid evolutionary changes and adaptation to novel environments. The goldfish Carassius auratus with sexual diploids and unisexual triploids coexisting in natural waters is one of the most widespread invasive fishes in Tibet, providing an ideal model to study e...

Simple Summary In this study, we predicted the suitable areas for three Tibetan fish in 2050 and 2090 under moderate and extreme climate change and explored the barrier effects of hydropower projects on the distribution areas of the three species. The three species are important to the local fishery and have received a wide range of attention. We f...

Anthropogenic biological invasions represent major concerns but enable us to investigate rapid evolutionary changes and adaptation to novel environments. The goldfish Carassius auratus with sexual diploids and asexual triploids coexisting in natural waters, is one of the most widespread invasive fishes in Tibet, providing an ideal model to study ev...

Fish diversity of the Yarlung Zangbo River is very sensitive and vulnerable to biological invasion, anthropogenic activities and climate change, especially in the upper and middle reaches where several endemic fishes have become endangered and nearly ten invasive fishes have been established. Here, we used environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding to...

Global biodiversity loss has increased interest in identifying the patterns and mechanisms that shape community assembly. Growing empirical evidence indicates that investigating functional and phylogenetic diversity beyond purely taxonomic considerations may provide different but complementary information about community assembly. However, such mul...

Global environmental change has altered biotic interactions in ecosystems. Trophic structure is a major characteristic of ecosystems, and understanding the factors determining trophic structure is thus important for predicting the response of ecological dynamics and ecosystem services to future environmental change. Different kinds of drivers, incl...

Invasive species have caused severe impacts on biodiversity and human society. Although the estimation of environmental impacts caused by invasive species has increased in recent years, economic losses associated with biological invasions are only sporadically estimated in space and time. In this study, we synthesized the losses incurred by invasio...

Understanding different facets of biodiversity patterns and their ecological drivers are essential for freshwater conservation. This is especially true for fish fauna in the Mekong River, one of the largest rivers in the world, which faces large-scale hydropower development and climate change. Here, we divided the Mekong River into 37 sub-basins to...

Background The scale degeneration is thought to be related to the adaptation to the extreme environment with cold climate and high-altitude in schizothoracine fishes. Gymnocypris eckloni, a schizothoracine fish living in plateau waters with the elevation above 2500 m, is nearly esquamate and only covered with shoulder scales and anal scales, making...

Surrogate species approaches are widely employed by conservation biologists to help address biodiversity conservation issues when distribution and abundance data for most species of conservation concern are not available or are limited due to insufficient funding and support. However, global reviews of research statuses and trends in the ecological...

Dramatic environmental changes and species invasions are increasingly threatening the diverse fish fauna of the Yellow River, China. This study examines temporal changes in the alpha and beta components of fish taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity in relation to anthropogenic environmental changes over the past 50 years. We hypothesized...

China is one of the megadiverse freshwater regions in the world, but the detailed diversity inventory, distribution pattern and ecological drivers are incompletely known, which hinders large-scale freshwater diversity conservation and pattern analysis at the global scale. Aiming to fill this knowledge gap, we compiled a comprehensive richness and d...

Understanding the mechanisms by which the environment shapes the life history of fishes is critical for our ability to predict the responses of species or ecosystems under global environmental change. Although many studies focused on the intraspecific level have been conducted in several regions, rare or threatened fish fauna have been poorly studi...

The multimetric index of biotic integrity (IBI) based on fish assemblages has been widely used to monitor aquatic ecosystem status in headwater streams. However, the application of the IBI has generally been biased by the low number of species and natural altitudinal gradients in these systems. To overcome these limitations, taxonomic distinctness...

Otolith microstructural features of larval and juvenile fish, and especially the confirmation of the first annulus, are important for studying the early life history of fish. In this study, otolith microstructure analysis was performed on 318 young Gymnocypris selincuoensis (99 larvae and 219 juveniles) collected from Lake Siling Co from May 2010 t...

The Australian lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri Krefft, 1870, is a threatened species whose long-term persistence is at risk due to land-use intensification, water resource development, and other human pressures. Changes to the hydrology of rivers has the potential to alter the availability of certain high-quality food resources for this species, th...

Explaining variation in life-history traits of invasive species is a key goal in invasion ecology. The goldfish, Carassius auratus, is one of the most successful invaders in freshwater systems and has successfully invaded the Yarlung Zangbo River located in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China. Although many studies on life-history trait variations i...

Climate change and hydropower development are two primary stressors affecting riverine ecosystems and both stressors facilitate invasions by non-native species. However, little study has focused on how habitats of native and non-native fishes may be affected by independent or combined impacts of such stressors. Here we used the Jinsha River as an e...

We investigated the seasonal habitat selection of Mosquitofish to increase our understanding of the ecology and invasiveness of this species. Sampling was conducted during the reproductive and non-reproductive season of Mosquitofish in four habitat types: Alternanthera philoxeroides habitat, Typha angustifolia habitat, Paspalum distichum habitat, a...

Biological invasions are a primary threat to global biodiversity, supporting mounting calls for the development of early‐warning systems to manage existing and emerging invaders. Here, we evaluated the geographical pattern of invasion risks of currently established and potentially emerging nonnative freshwater fishes in China by jointly considering...

Understanding mechanisms of fish invasion success is crucial to controlling existing invasions and preventing potential future spread. Despite considerable advances in explaining successful fish invasions, little is known about how non-native fish successfully invade alpine freshwater ecosystems. Here, we explore the role of fish life history and e...

The lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) are the largest and highest lake group in the world. Gymnocypris selincuoensis is the only cyprinid fish living in lake Selincuo, the largest lake on QTP. However, its genetic resource is still blank, limiting studies on molecular and genetic analysis. In this study, the transcriptome of G. selincuoensis...

The complete mitogenome of Triplophysa cuneicephala is 16,571 bp in length with the A + T contents of 56.12%, containing 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and a putative control region. All PCGs employed ATG as the start codon, except for COI which utilized GTG as start codon. Four stop codons were observed in the PCGs, i...

The complete mitochondrial genome of Triplophysa sellaefer is a circular molecule of 16,571 bp in length with the A + T contents of 56.84%, containing 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes, and a putative control region. Six gene overlaps and 10 intergenic spacers were observed, with the total length of 26 bp and 34 bp, respec...

Dam removal is becoming an effective approach for aquatic biodiversity restoration in damming river in order to balance the aquatic ecosystem conservation with large-scale cascade damming. However, the effects of dam removal on fish communities in Asian mountainous rivers, which are dominated by Cypriniformes fishes, are still not well known. To de...

The western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis Baird and Girard, 1853), which is considered one of the 100 worst invasive species in the world, has been introduced to China. However, there is little information on the biological characteristics of mosquitofish in China. To better determine how this invasive species might impact China, the life-history...

Resources of Japanese anchovy ( Engraulis japonicus Temminck & Schlegel, 1846) are undergoing dramatic recessions in China as the consequence of intensifying anthropogenic activities. Elucidating the influences of local-scale environmental factors on early life history traits is of great importance to design strategies conserving and restoring the...

Environmental data Data of environmental factors in 40 stations in the Yangtze River Estuary in May, 2012. Station of 1, 2, 5, 6 and 9 were not accessed due to the lower depth.

Data of sea surface temperature Data of daily sea surface temperatures (SST) in Station 29 and 30 during growing seasons of anchovy in the Yangtze River Estuary.

Biological and otolith data of anchovy Standard length (mm), weight (g), increment number and width of each increment (µm) for each anchovy in Station 29 and 30.

The feeding habits of the Chinese minnow, Rhynchocypris oxycephalus (Sauvage & Dabry de Thiersant, 1874), were investigated in the Laohegou River, a tributary of the upper Yangtze River, China. A total of 412 specimens were collected by electrofishing in four seasons of 2012, 7 days per season. Diet composition was analyzed according to season, siz...

Pleistocene climatic oscillations have greatly influenced the evolutionary history and distribution pattern of most extant species. However, their effects on species on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) are not well understood. To investigate the effects of past climatic shifts, particularly the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), on plateau fish, we analyse...

Cytochrome B (Cyt B) gene and control region of mitochondrial DNA are considered important for evaluating phylogenetic association of a species. In this study, we sequenced Cyt B and control region of Schizothorax plagiostomus and constructed phylogenetic association tree of S. plagiostomus with 23 schizothoracine fishes. We found S. plagiostomus t...

The schizothoracine fishes with three evolutionary grades adapt well to various altitude environments, and show significant differences in adaptive characters. To understand the genetic mechanisms of high altitude adaptation, this study aims to compare the mRNA and miRNA expression profiles in Ptychobarbus dipogon and Schizothorax oconnori which re...

Ngangtse Co (4535 m a.s.l., 840 km²) is a typical endorheic lake in Tibet. In 2015, we investigated the fish resource in this lake and its rivers and collected two Triplophysa species, including T. brevicauda and T. stewarti. To understand the evolutionary dynamics of Triplophysa in Ngangtse Co, the adaptive and genetic divergence between river and...

Aim Human-mediated species introductions and extirpations have resulted in the homogenization of biotas over time. However, there remains considerable uncertainty in our understanding of homogenization process for megadiverse regions of the world. Here, we investigate the consequences of widespread species invasions and extirpations for the biogeog...

The complete mitochondrial genome is important for determining the phylogenetic relationship of species. In the current study, we sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of Kunar Snow trout (Schizothorax labiatus). It was found to be 61,590 bp in length having 37 genes (13 protein coding genes, 2 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes, 22 transfer (tRNA) g...

The East Asian monsoon and related seasonal rain belts are assumed to be significantly variable at intraseasonal, interannual, and interdecadal time scales, and largely determine the hydrology and ecological processes of the streams and rivers in this region. This study investigated the spatiotemporal variation in fish assemblages and the relative...

Length-weight relationships were determined for four fish species (Hemibarbus labeo Pallas, 1776; Tachysurus nitidus Sauvage & Dabry de Thiersant, 1874; Pseudobagrus vachelli Richardson, 1846; Glossogobius olivaceus Temminck & Schlegel, 1845) upstream in the Minjiang River, Fujian Province, in southeastern China. Samples were collected in 2012-2013...

Length–weight relationships were determined for four fish species (Hemibarbus labeo Pallas, 1776; Tachysurus nitidus Sauvage & Dabry de Thiersant, 1874; Pseudobagrus vachelli Richardson, 1846; Glossogobius olivaceus Temminck & Schlegel, 1845) upstream in the Minjiang River in Fujian Province, southeastern China. Samples were collected employing var...

The water level oscillation of endorheic lakes and extent change of glaciers associated with the Asian monsoon are known as prominent representatives of climatic and environmental events in the Tibetan Plateau during the Quaternary. However, details process in spatial and temporal changes are still debated. We use the schizothoracines as a palaeocl...

Length–weight relationships of six fish species are presented. Fish samples were collected from the Lancang River, in the Chinese section of the Upper Mekong River, in southwestern China. This study reports the first length–weight relationship for one of these species.

Appendix S1 Geographical distribution and GenBank accession numbers of haplotypes.

Appendix S2 Statistical 95% parsimony networks ET and WT generated by TCS.

Appendix S3 Bayesian Skyline plots showing estimates of the effective population size through time.

Non-native fishes are regarded as a serious threat to freshwater biodiversity. However, little information exists about non-native freshwater fish in China. This study compiled an inventory of non-native freshwater fish species in China based on various sources. The inventory includes a total of 439 freshwater fish species belonging to 22 orders, 6...

Two new species of the genus Cobitis from southern China, C. hereromacula from the Luohe River in Guangdong Province and C. baishagensis from the Nandujiang River in Hainan Province, are described and illustrated here. C. hereromacula can be distinguished from its congeners by possessing the following combination of characteristics: absence of the...

The consequences of fractional spawning on the early-life growth rates of invasive goldfish (Carassius auratus) from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were studied using the otolith microstructure of samples collected in June 2011. The effect of the estimated hatching date on the subsequent growth of individual fish was determined by back-calculating their...

This study presents the length–weight (LWR) and length–length relationships (LLR) of four fish species (Gymnocypris namensis Wu & Ren, 1982; Herzensteinia microcephalus Herzenstein, 1891; Triplophysa stenura Herzenstein, 1888; and Triplophysa brevicauda Herzenstein, 1888) collected from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China. A total of 291 specimens was...

Schizothorax plagiostomus, a fresh water fish, is an economically important fish of Pakistan. In this study, the complete mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence of S. plagiostomus was explored. The mitogenome length was found to be 16 563bp with 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes and 2 non-coding regions: origin of light-strand replic...

The mitochondrial DNA sequence represents a mainstay of phylogenetics. It allows biologists to elucidate the evolutionary relationships among species. It also permits an examination of the relatedness of populations, hence got importance in the field of biology. The current study was designed to know the mitochondrial sequence of Schizothorax esoci...

Understanding food webs is important and useful for planning environmental conservation, management and restoration. However, research on food webs is not uniform globally; it tends to be concentrated in specific areas or ecosystem types, and would hinder our understanding of food webs and ecosystem processes. This study examined the trends in food...

In the present study, we preformed a bibliometric analysis of published research papers related to the Mekong River during 1991–2012, based on the Science Citation Index Expended. We investigated nation, institution, authors’ research performance, the cited times, impact factor, journals and subject categories of the published papers. CPP was used...

Length-weight relationships of 13 fish species are presented from samples collected in the Ili River, northwestern China. This study provides the first description of length-weight relationships for five of the species. Coefficients of determination (r2) were >0.95 for 10 of the species.

Daily increment validation in fish otolith is fundamental to studies on fish otolith microstructure, age determination and life history traits, and thus is critical for species conservation and fishery management. However, it has never been done for Schizothoracine fish, which is the dominant component of fish fauna in the Tibetan Plateau. This stu...

Understanding intraspecific variability in fish somatic growth rates is important as growth is a key life history trait that plays a fundamental role in many biological and ecological processes. Here, the influence of environmental and chemical parameters was tested on intraspecific variability in growth rates of the cyprinid fishes roach Rutilus r...

Morphology features and sequences of mitochondrial cytochrome b (cyt b) gene were analyzed of the species Cobitis Linnaeus, 1758 from the River Pearl basin of China. Three new species of C. leptosoma sp. nov., C. wumingensis sp. nov., and C. obtusirostra sp. nov. were described. C. leptosoma is distinguishable from its congeners by a long knife-sha...

Goldfish Carassius auratus have been established in myriad ecosystems outside of their native ranges, and part of their successful establishment in new ecosystems might be attributed to the shift in life history traits. To explore the role of phenotypic shifts in Goldfish invasions, we quantified and compared spawning times and growth rates in the...

This paper provides length-weight relationships for nine fish species from the Laohegou River, a tributary of the upper Yangtze River. Length-weight relationships for six of these species are recorded for the first time. New maximum lengths for two species are also reported.

Schizopygopsis anteroventris (Cyprinidae: Schizothoracinae) is an ecologically and economically important cyprinid endemic to Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, China. In this study, we sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of S. anteroventris by DNA sequencing based on PCR fragments. The mitogenome of S. anteroventris is 16,620 in length, containing 13...

Diptychus maculatus (Cypriniformes: Cyprinidae), the sole species of genus Diptychus, is an economically important freshwater fish widely distributed in Asia. In this study, we first sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of D. maculatus. The genome is 16,835 bp in length, consisting of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transfer RNA genes, 2 ribosom...

The consequences of climate change are becoming increasingly evident in the Tibetan Plateau, represented by glaciers retreating and lakes expanding, but the biological response to climate change by plateau–lake ecosystems is poorly known. In this study, we applied dendrochronology methods to develop a growth index chronology with otolith increment...

This paper provides the length–weight relationships for 21 fish species belonging to four families and 19 genera from the Xiangjiang River, a tributary of the middle Yangtze River in China. Among them, the length–weight relationships for 14 fishes are first-time reports for FishBase, and new maximum total lengths of 13 fishes are also reported.

Identifying and explaining the pattern of how stream fish assemblages vary spatially are basic for the conservation and management of fish species diversity. Although low-head dams may facilitate the native invasions of generalist fishes to headwater streams, few studies have evaluated the impacts of the native invaders on indigenous fish assemblag...

Length-weight relationships (LWR) for three cyprinid fish species collected from the headwaters of the Nujiang River in Tibet, China, were determined. The values of parameter b in the LWR equations were estimated as 2.54 for Schizopygopsis thermalis, 3.3 for Ptychobarbus kaznakovi, and 2.74 for Schizothorax nukiangensis, respectively. These are the...

Abstract Herzensteinia microcephalus (Herzenstein, 1891) is the highest naturally occurring cyprinid in the world, and inhabits rivers in the Tibetan Plateau at elevations of 4500-5200 m. Few studies on this species have been contributed. In this study, we got the mitochondrial genome sequences of H. microcephalus. The mitogenome of H. microcephalu...

Abstract Platypharodon extremus Herzenstein, 1891 (Cyprinidae: Schizothoracinae), is a monotypic genus species only found in the Qinghai-Tibet plateau of China. Due to human disturbance and related environmental change since the 1950s, the population of P. extremus declined rapidly. As a result, it was listed in the China Red Data Book of Endangere...

Abstract Chuanchia labiosa Herzenstein, 1891 (Cyprinidae: Schizothoracinae) is the sole species of genus Chuanchia and is endemic to China. This species plays an important role in the upper reaches of the Yellow River and has been listed in both the China Red Data Book of Endangered Animal and the China Species Red List. In this study, the complete...

Using seasonally collected data (2009-2010) from 15 sampling sites that represent first- to fifth-order streams within the Qingyi watershed, we examined the spatio-temporal patterns of fish assemblages along two longitudinal gradients to explore the effects of a large dam on fish assemblages at the watershed scale. No significant variation was obse...

The influences of low-head dams on the fish assemblages were examined in this study, using fish data collected in six treatment and five reference sites at three low-head dams in the headwater streams of the Qingyi watershed, China. Comparing with those in the reference sites, local habitat variables were significantly altered by low-head dams in t...

This study was carried out in the Laohegou stream with elevations ranging from 763m-1,948m, which drains a surface area of 110 km2 over its 52 km length. It is one of the upstream tributaries of the Yangtze River located in the southwest of China. We collected fishes, benthic invertebrates and water samples in 32 sampling sites from the upstream to...

Dams and other hydrological modifications are the biggest anthropogenic stressors for fishery resources in the Yangtze River Basin. There were over 50,000 dams built from the Yangtze main stem, tributaries, and associated lakes in the basin. The largest dams in the main stem include the Gezhouba Dam and the Three Gorges Dam, which have been built f...

The Mekong River is the second richest river in the world for its fish diversity. At the moment, the mega-dams along the Mekong mainstream constitute a major threat to freshwater species diversity and abundance. In order to protect those fishes, a low-head dam built on the Jidu River, a tributary of the upper Mekong River, China, was removed in the...

Study of the life history traits of any species plays an essential role for understanding their relationship with the surrounding environment and scientific management. The Chinese minnow Rhynchocypris oxycephalus, an ecologically and economically important species which was widely distributed in East Asia, is currently diminishing. In the present...

Length–weight relationships for four native species (Oryzias latipes Temminck & Schlegel, 1846; Rhodeus ocellatus Kner, 1866; Rhinogobius giurinus Rutter, 1897; and Micropercops swinhonis Günther, 1873) were determined. The fish were collected from the wetlands of the central Yangtze River, in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. Samples were obtained fro...

A 24-week feeding trial was conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) on growth, physiological responses, histological changes, fecundity and accumulation in gibel carp (Carassius auratus gibelio) during the stage of gonad development. Triplicate groups of gibel carp (initial body weight 57.6 ± 0.1 g) were fed with three semip...

As the water source of Asian several largest rivers, the numerous Tibetan-Plateau systems support a unique but still unexplored biodiversity. This paper investigates one such river to examine the longitudinal variations of macroinvertebrate richness and composition, and identify the assemblageenvironment associations. Altogether 94 taxa belonging t...

The topmouth gudgeon (Pseudorasbora parva) and goldfish (Carassius auratus), two small omnivorous freshwater fishes, have been introduced into many countries by human activities during recent years. Wide and severe ecological harm has resulted from the pathogens that these fishes carried and from the extremely large populations of these fishes. Bas...

A 75-day experiment was conducted with juvenile gibel carp (Carassius auratus gibelio) (4.80 ± 0.01 g) to evaluate effects of dietary chitosan on fish growth performance, haematology, intestine morphology and immune response. Six isonitrogenous (crude protein: 383 g kg−1), isolipid (97.5 g kg−1) and isocaloric (gross energy: 16.7 kJ g−1) diets were...

A 75 days experiment was conducted in a flow-through system on juvenile gibel carp (Carassius auratus gibelio) (3.43 ± 0.01 g) to evaluate the effects of dietary lysozyme on growth performance, intestine morphology, microbiota and immune response. Four isonitrogenous (crude protein: 367 g kg−1) isolipid (62 g kg−1) and isocaloric (gross energy: 17....

Eighteen polymorphic microsatellite primers were developed for Schizopygopsis younghusbandi using an enrichment genomic library and evaluated for PCR using the genomic DNA of 29 individuals from the Lhasa River in Tibet. Eighteen of 70 loci amplified reliable bands revealed a useful degree of polymorphism with a typical multi-banded pattern of poly...

The goldfish Carassius aruatus had become one of the worldwide invasive fishes and introduced for aquiculture in Tibet at the early 1990’s. In this study, we validated the daily deposition of increments in otolith of goldfish and used the otolith microstructure to deduce the hatching date and to characterize the early growth of two different popula...