Fish species occurrence and composition in shallow (wetland) habitats of Northern Lake Victoria (Uganda)

Study Extent

Sampling was conducted on the Ugandan part of Lake Victoria, near Jinja. The sampling was from 1993 to 1996.

Sampling

Sampling was conducted parallel to the shoreline off each dominant vegetation type. For each habitat type, sampling was done within 20 m from the shore and beyond, between 20m and about 70 m away from the shoreline. Fish was captured using gillnets and basket traps set overnight. Complete details of sampling are available in Balirwa (1998).

Quality Control

All scientific names were validated using FishBase (Froese & Paully, 2018).

Method steps

1. Geo-referencing and coordinate conversions The coordinates associated with the dataset were retrieved from Balirwa (1998). These were transformed to decimal degrees using online coordinate conversion tools including canadensys (http://data.canadensys.net/tools/coordinates) and PGC Coordinate Converter (https://www.pgc.umn.edu/apps/convert/) of the University of Minnesota. The locations verified in Google Earth.
2. Confirming fish species names Species names were confirmed using FishBase (Froese & Paully, 2018). For the species that were allocated to the genus Barbus in the original survey data, the currently accepted nomenclature, Labeobarbus for the large hexaploid species was adopted (Van Ginneken et al., 2017; Vreven et al. 2016). All haplochromine cichlids are allocated to genus Haplochromis which is accepted in Fishbase.

1. Astatoreochromis alluaudi
   rank: species
2. Bagrus docmak
   rank: species
3. Brycinus jacksonii
   rank: species
4. Brycinus sadleri
   rank: species
5. Clarias alluaudi
   rank: species
6. Clarias gariepinus
   rank: species
7. Clarias liocephalus
   rank: species
8. Coptodon zillii
   rank: species
9. Gnathonemus longibarbis
   rank: species
10. Haplochromis
    rank: genus
11. Haplochromis barbarae
    rank: species
12. Haplochromis laparogramma
    rank: species
13. Haplochromis lividus
    rank: species
14. Haplochromis macrops
    rank: species
15. Haplochromis nigricans
    rank: species
16. Haplochromis nubilus
    rank: species
17. Haplochromis nyanzae
    rank: species
18. Hippopotamyrus grahami
    rank: species
19. Labeobarbus altianalis
    rank: species
20. Lates niloticus
    rank: species
21. Mastacembelus frenatus
    rank: species
22. Momyrus kannume
    rank: species
23. Oreochromis esculentus
    rank: species
24. Oreochromis leucostictus
    rank: species
25. Oreochromis niloticus
    rank: species
26. Oreochromis variabilis
    rank: species
27. Protopterus aethiopicus
    rank: species
28. Synodontis afrofischeri
    rank: species
29. Synodontis victoriae
    rank: species

The study covered habitats in Northern Lake Victoria, Uganda