The assemblage of fish of the Tyligul River (Black-Sea basin of South-Western Ukraine)

Abstract

In this paper, the fish assemblage of the lower flow of the Tyligul River (173 km length), North-Western Black Sea basin is described. Studies were conducted at the Odessa region in 2012 and 2014. The riverbed in there sites is overgrown, boggy, and the salinity is up to 2 ‰. In total, 12 fish species from four families were registered from 690 specimens. Some of the materials are transferred to the collection fund of the National Museum of Natural History of NAS of Ukraine in Kyiv. This is the first collection of samples in the museum collections of the basin, excluding Tyligul Estuary, it has high salinity and therefore is close to marine fish fauna. The fish assemblage includes two introduced species, the stone moroko Pseudorasbora parva (Temminck et Schlegel, 1846), and the Prussian carp Carassius gibelio (Bloch, 1782), while the others are native. The most numerous species were the belica, Leucaspius delineatus (Heckel, 1843) and the stone moroko. Predominant fish limnophyls are unpretentious to the oxygen content in water. Some of Ukrainian sticklebacks Pungitius platygaster (Kessler, 1859) had parasites Lernaea cf. elegans (Copepoda: Lerneidae), and the majority of the studied specimens were infected. Species belonging to white-fin gudgeon Romanogobio sp. from Tyligul is controversial and needs further investigation as river basin is on the verge of habitat of several species of the genus.

Keywords

• Tyligul River
• fish
• assemblage
• Northern Black Sea
• museum collections