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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...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2013
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3578865 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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