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Temporal comparison and predictors of fish species abundance and richness on undisturbed coral reef patches
Large disturbances can cause rapid degradation of coral reef communities, but what baseline changes in species assemblages occur on undisturbed reefs through time? We surveyed live coral cover, reef fish abundance and fish species richness in 1997 and again in 2007 on 47 fringing patch reefs of vary...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671157/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26644988 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1459 |
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author | Wagner, Elena L.E.S. Roche, Dominique G. Binning, Sandra A. Wismer, Sharon Bshary, Redouan |
author_facet | Wagner, Elena L.E.S. Roche, Dominique G. Binning, Sandra A. Wismer, Sharon Bshary, Redouan |
author_sort | Wagner, Elena L.E.S. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Large disturbances can cause rapid degradation of coral reef communities, but what baseline changes in species assemblages occur on undisturbed reefs through time? We surveyed live coral cover, reef fish abundance and fish species richness in 1997 and again in 2007 on 47 fringing patch reefs of varying size and depth at Mersa Bareika, Ras Mohammed National Park, Egypt. No major human or natural disturbance event occurred between these two survey periods in this remote protected area. In the absence of large disturbances, we found that live coral cover, reef fish abundance and fish species richness did not differ in 1997 compared to 2007. Fish abundance and species richness on patches was largely related to the presence of shelters (caves and/or holes), live coral cover and patch size (volume). The presence of the ectoparasite-eating cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus, was also positively related to fish species richness. Our results underscore the importance of physical reef characteristics, such as patch size and shelter availability, in addition to biotic characteristics, such as live coral cover and cleaner wrasse abundance, in supporting reef fish species richness and abundance through time in a relatively undisturbed and understudied region. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4671157 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-46711572015-12-07 Temporal comparison and predictors of fish species abundance and richness on undisturbed coral reef patches Wagner, Elena L.E.S. Roche, Dominique G. Binning, Sandra A. Wismer, Sharon Bshary, Redouan PeerJ Fisheries and Fish Science Large disturbances can cause rapid degradation of coral reef communities, but what baseline changes in species assemblages occur on undisturbed reefs through time? We surveyed live coral cover, reef fish abundance and fish species richness in 1997 and again in 2007 on 47 fringing patch reefs of varying size and depth at Mersa Bareika, Ras Mohammed National Park, Egypt. No major human or natural disturbance event occurred between these two survey periods in this remote protected area. In the absence of large disturbances, we found that live coral cover, reef fish abundance and fish species richness did not differ in 1997 compared to 2007. Fish abundance and species richness on patches was largely related to the presence of shelters (caves and/or holes), live coral cover and patch size (volume). The presence of the ectoparasite-eating cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus, was also positively related to fish species richness. Our results underscore the importance of physical reef characteristics, such as patch size and shelter availability, in addition to biotic characteristics, such as live coral cover and cleaner wrasse abundance, in supporting reef fish species richness and abundance through time in a relatively undisturbed and understudied region. PeerJ Inc. 2015-12-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4671157/ /pubmed/26644988 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1459 Text en © 2015 Wagner 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 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Fisheries and Fish Science Wagner, Elena L.E.S. Roche, Dominique G. Binning, Sandra A. Wismer, Sharon Bshary, Redouan Temporal comparison and predictors of fish species abundance and richness on undisturbed coral reef patches |
title | Temporal comparison and predictors of fish species abundance and richness on undisturbed coral reef patches |
title_full | Temporal comparison and predictors of fish species abundance and richness on undisturbed coral reef patches |
title_fullStr | Temporal comparison and predictors of fish species abundance and richness on undisturbed coral reef patches |
title_full_unstemmed | Temporal comparison and predictors of fish species abundance and richness on undisturbed coral reef patches |
title_short | Temporal comparison and predictors of fish species abundance and richness on undisturbed coral reef patches |
title_sort | temporal comparison and predictors of fish species abundance and richness on undisturbed coral reef patches |
topic | Fisheries and Fish Science |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4671157/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26644988 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1459 |
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