Fish Community Dynamics in Murray-Darling Basin Floodplain Wetlands

Fish assemblage data from 73 floodplain wetlands in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin combines three decades of historical records (1986–2022) with contemporary surveys using fyke nets, seine nets, and eDNA. Contemporary communities contain 22 species, a depauperate subset of the 28 historical species, with invasive common carp now present in 93% of sites. The dataset supports analysis of community reconfiguration, species strategies, and persistent native networks within invaded ecosystems.

Use Cases

• Analyzing long-term community shifts and baseline changes using historical and contemporary species occurrence data.
• Modeling species-environment relationships and spatial distributions for native specialists and invasive generalists.
• Identifying persistent native species associations as potential recovery nuclei for restoration planning.
• Validating predictive models for rare and threatened species against common, invasive species.

Strengths

• Integrates three decades of temporal data (1986–2022) for longitudinal analysis.
• Combines multiple survey methods (fyke nets, seine nets, eDNA) across 73 contemporary wetland sites.
• Provides specific occurrence statistics, such as common carp in 93% of contemporary wetlands versus 47% historically.

Limitations

• Column names and a precise row count are not provided, limiting understanding of data structure.
• The dataset size (266320) is given without units, making its exact meaning (e.g., bytes, cells) ambiguous.
• Metadata for the historical records component is less detailed than for the contemporary surveys.

Provenance

Source

Saul Gonzalez Murcia

Collection Method

Integrated analysis combining historical records and contemporary surveys using fyke nets, seine nets, and eDNA.

Time Range

1986–2022

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-18.

Geography

Floodplain wetlands in the Kiewa, Ovens and Murray Riverina basin, part of Australia's Murray-Darling Basin.