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Digital Reef Rugosity Estimates Coral Reef Habitat Complexity

Ecological habitats with greater structural complexity contain more species due to increased niche diversity. This is especially apparent on coral reefs where individual coral colonies aggregate to give a reef its morphology, species zonation, and three dimensionality. Structural complexity is class...

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Autores principales: Dustan, Phillip, Doherty, Orla, Pardede, Shinta
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3578865/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23437380
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057386
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author Dustan, Phillip
Doherty, Orla
Pardede, Shinta
author_facet Dustan, Phillip
Doherty, Orla
Pardede, Shinta
author_sort Dustan, Phillip
collection PubMed
description Ecological habitats with greater structural complexity contain more species due to increased niche diversity. This is especially apparent on coral reefs where individual coral colonies aggregate to give a reef its morphology, species zonation, and three dimensionality. Structural complexity is classically measured with a reef rugosity index, which is the ratio of a straight line transect to the distance a flexible chain of equal length travels when draped over the reef substrate; yet, other techniques from visual categories to remote sensing have been used to characterize structural complexity at scales from microhabitats to reefscapes. Reef-scale methods either lack quantitative precision or are too time consuming to be routinely practical, while remotely sensed indices are mismatched to the finer scale morphology of coral colonies and reef habitats. In this communication a new digital technique, Digital Reef Rugosity (DRR) is described which utilizes a self-contained water level gauge enabling a diver to quickly and accurately characterize rugosity with non-invasive millimeter scale measurements of coral reef surface height at decimeter intervals along meter scale transects. The precise measurements require very little post-processing and are easily imported into a spreadsheet for statistical analyses and modeling. To assess its applicability we investigated the relationship between DRR and fish community structure at four coral reef sites on Menjangan Island off the northwest corner of Bali, Indonesia and one on mainland Bali to the west of Menjangan Island; our findings show a positive relationship between DRR and fish diversity. Since structural complexity drives key ecological processes on coral reefs, we consider that DRR may become a useful quantitative community-level descriptor to characterize reef complexity.
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spelling pubmed-35788652013-02-22 Digital Reef Rugosity Estimates Coral Reef Habitat Complexity Dustan, Phillip Doherty, Orla Pardede, Shinta PLoS One Research Article Ecological habitats with greater structural complexity contain more species due to increased niche diversity. This is especially apparent on coral reefs where individual coral colonies aggregate to give a reef its morphology, species zonation, and three dimensionality. Structural complexity is classically measured with a reef rugosity index, which is the ratio of a straight line transect to the distance a flexible chain of equal length travels when draped over the reef substrate; yet, other techniques from visual categories to remote sensing have been used to characterize structural complexity at scales from microhabitats to reefscapes. Reef-scale methods either lack quantitative precision or are too time consuming to be routinely practical, while remotely sensed indices are mismatched to the finer scale morphology of coral colonies and reef habitats. In this communication a new digital technique, Digital Reef Rugosity (DRR) is described which utilizes a self-contained water level gauge enabling a diver to quickly and accurately characterize rugosity with non-invasive millimeter scale measurements of coral reef surface height at decimeter intervals along meter scale transects. The precise measurements require very little post-processing and are easily imported into a spreadsheet for statistical analyses and modeling. To assess its applicability we investigated the relationship between DRR and fish community structure at four coral reef sites on Menjangan Island off the northwest corner of Bali, Indonesia and one on mainland Bali to the west of Menjangan Island; our findings show a positive relationship between DRR and fish diversity. Since structural complexity drives key ecological processes on coral reefs, we consider that DRR may become a useful quantitative community-level descriptor to characterize reef complexity. Public Library of Science 2013-02-21 /pmc/articles/PMC3578865/ /pubmed/23437380 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057386 Text en © 2013 Dustan et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Dustan, Phillip
Doherty, Orla
Pardede, Shinta
Digital Reef Rugosity Estimates Coral Reef Habitat Complexity
title Digital Reef Rugosity Estimates Coral Reef Habitat Complexity
title_full Digital Reef Rugosity Estimates Coral Reef Habitat Complexity
title_fullStr Digital Reef Rugosity Estimates Coral Reef Habitat Complexity
title_full_unstemmed Digital Reef Rugosity Estimates Coral Reef Habitat Complexity
title_short Digital Reef Rugosity Estimates Coral Reef Habitat Complexity
title_sort digital reef rugosity estimates coral reef habitat complexity
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3578865/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23437380
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057386
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