The Fishes and the Forest: Explorations in Amazonian Natural History [first edition]

Deforestation in the tropics is taking place at an accelerated rate. One region in peril is the Amazon Basin, which possesses the largest extent of rainforest and the most diverse freshwater fish fauna to be found anywhere on earth. In a unique ecological study carried out in an environment usually inaccessible to those not trained from childhood to navigate its far reaches, Michael Goulding shows that Amazonian fishes and flooded forests have interacted to an extent unknown elsewhere. His investigation offers the first substantive evidence that a large part of the Amazon's fishes are nourished in flooded forests and that destruction of this habitat will likely have a devastating effect on important commercial and subsistence fisheries. With its wealth of information on the ecology of many of the larger fishes of the Amazon, their interaction with fruits and seeds, and their nutritional structure, this volume will contribute to a better understanding of natural fisheries and their proper management and, it is hoped, to protection of the flood forests.