Effects of thermal regime variability on adult rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) mortality in Afromontane river systems
Blessing Mugaviri, Alton Aliki, Bianca Nyamupingidza, Tongayi Mwedzi, Beaven Utete, Taurai Bere · 2026
Read Effects of thermal regime variability on adult rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) mortality in Afromontane river systems by Blessing Mugaviri, Alton Aliki, Bianca Nyamupingidza, Tongayi Mwedzi, Beaven Utete, Taurai Bere (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13242468.txt.
Description
Blessing Mugaviri and colleagues linked three decades of river temperatures to rainbow trout deaths in Zimbabwe's Nyanga National Park. Their paper appeared in Environmental Monitoring and Assessment in 2026. Rainbow trout are farmed and stocked in these cool Afromontane streams, well south of the species' native range. The team combined records from 1994 to 2024 with fresh field data and looked for temperature patterns behind adult fish deaths.
Summer deaths dwarfed winter deaths, and short warm spells explained nearly half of the swings in mortality. Once water passed a threshold near fifteen degrees Celsius, deaths climbed sharply. Long-term averages barely moved, so the danger comes from brief heat spikes rather than slow warming. The authors warn that even modest warm departures from normal can hit this population hard. Their threshold gives park managers a clear warning line for protecting the trout.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Blessing Mugaviri, Alton Aliki, Bianca Nyamupingidza, Tongayi Mwedzi, Beaven Utete, Taurai Bere |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 40 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |