Ornamental fish of economic and biological importance to the Xingu River

aPós-Graduação em Ciência Animal, Universidade Federal do Pará – UFPA, Rua Augusto Corrêa, Guamá, CEP 66075-110, Belém, PA, Brazil bEmpresa Alimento Seguro, Rua Travessa 14 de Abril, 1057, São Brás, CEP 66060-460, Belém, PA, Brazil cLaboratório de Dinâmica de Populações Marinhas, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco – UFRPE, Rua Dom Manoel de Medeiros, s/n, Bairro de Dois Irmãos, CEP 52171-030, Recife, PE, Brazil dThe Hartman Group, 3150 Richards Rd Suite #200, Bellevue, WA 98005, Estados Unidos eEmbrapa Tabuleiros Costeiros. Av. Beira Mar 3250, CEP 49025-040, Aracaju, SE, Brazil *e-mail: fabriciomramos@gmail.com

The deployment of the Belo Monte's Hydroelectric Power Plant, in the state of Pará, influences and makes changes to the river flow and hydrological cycle in the area, which reflects in the decrease of fish populations (Eletrobras, 2008).
In the city of Altamira, over 200 species of fish are traded as ornamentals (Carvalho Junior et al., 2009).The increase of the market value leads to increased selective fishing and consecutively to overfishing.Furthermore, environmental changes imply major social changes, since a large part of the local population depends on ornamental fishery as a source of income.While Brazil does not develop protocols for the commercial production of ornamental fish, these populations live off extractive fishing.On the other hand in Asian countries, considered major importers, technological advances have been recorded in aquaculture for several Brazilian species of high commercial value, such as stingrays (Potamotrygonidae) and several species of plecos (Loricariidae), among them the zebra pleco (Chapman, 2000;Ribeiro et al., 2009).Hence, a loss in profits for Brazil can be observed.
Thus the choice of species for ornamental fish farming should consider biological characteristics such as reproductive and dietary habits, requirements for the creation of eggs and larvae.
This paper aims to select priority species for research to enable the development of species of ornamental interest from the Xingu region of cultivation technologies.
The indices of species selection were based on biological and zootechnical aspects.Furthermore, due to peculiar characteristics of ornamental fishes, characteristics described by Kodama et al. (2011) were also considered, such as market demand, value marketing, zootechnical aspects of species and the available production technology.
Thus the indexes were divided into 2 groups: Biological/ zootechnical: abundance, distribution, reproductive potential, the rusticity of captive conditions, capacity to form groups and couples, reproductive and stocking density, and Economic/ecologic: market value and conservation status.
Ninety-four species of fish from the Xingu were used, distributed in twelve families occurring in the ornamental market, which were classified according to the index, bibliography and collected information of the actors in the productive chain of ornamental fish, followed by a Marketplace analysis.Each index received grades: high, medium and low.After this step, we constructed a feasibility matrix, a tool developed using Fuzzy logic, because of uncertainties in the dynamics of the ornamental market and the lack of biological information on the species of ornamental fish from the Xingu River (Shaw and Simões, 1999).
The selection of priority species for research was restricted to three main fish families, based on the interests of local fishermen and exporters: Loricariidae (Table 1), Potamotrygonidae and Cichlidae (Table 2).

Table 1 .
List of the species assessed from the family Loricariidae.No valid description.(L-Number) classification Aqualog company used by the hobbyist and trade.