Maiden study on fish diversity of the Diring River in Baksa District, Assam, India

The Northeast India has several natural water resources that support a variety of aquatic fauna. However, many parts of the region have remained unexplored for ichthyofauna. Research on the diversity of fishes in large water bodies has received significant attention from many researchers in the region. In contrast, studies on small stream rivers are very scant. Therefore, the present study aims to record the diversity of fish fauna in the small stream Diring River of Baksa District, Assam. In this survey, 27 species of fishes were recorded from five study sites. The dominant family was Cyprinidae, comprising 48% of the total fish species. The conservation status of the majority of species was Least Concern (88.8%) followed by Near Threatened (3.7%) and Vulnerable (3.7%). However, conservation status of 3.7% of the fish species was not evaluated by IUCN. The Shannon diversity index ranged from 1.5 to 2.6, the evenness index from 0.84 to 0.98, and the richness index from 1.1 to 2.6, indicating a good status of ichthyofaunal resources in the study sites. Since there were no existing records on the fish diversity of the Diring River, this maiden study might serve as baseline information for further research.