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Invasive lionfish had no measurable effect on prey fish community structure across the Belizean Barrier Reef

Invasive lionfish are assumed to significantly affect Caribbean reef fish communities. However, evidence of lionfish effects on native reef fishes is based on uncontrolled observational studies or small-scale, unrepresentative experiments, with findings ranging from no effect to large effects on pre...

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Autores principales: Hackerott, Serena, Valdivia, Abel, Cox, Courtney E., Silbiger, Nyssa J., Bruno, John F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5446774/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28560093
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3270
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author Hackerott, Serena
Valdivia, Abel
Cox, Courtney E.
Silbiger, Nyssa J.
Bruno, John F.
author_facet Hackerott, Serena
Valdivia, Abel
Cox, Courtney E.
Silbiger, Nyssa J.
Bruno, John F.
author_sort Hackerott, Serena
collection PubMed
description Invasive lionfish are assumed to significantly affect Caribbean reef fish communities. However, evidence of lionfish effects on native reef fishes is based on uncontrolled observational studies or small-scale, unrepresentative experiments, with findings ranging from no effect to large effects on prey density and richness. Moreover, whether lionfish affect populations and communities of native reef fishes at larger, management-relevant scales is unknown. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of lionfish on coral reef prey fish communities in a natural complex reef system. We quantified lionfish and the density, richness, and composition of native prey fishes (0–10 cm total length) at sixteen reefs along ∼250 km of the Belize Barrier Reef from 2009 to 2013. Lionfish invaded our study sites during this four-year longitudinal study, thus our sampling included fish community structure before and after our sites were invaded, i.e., we employed a modified BACI design. We found no evidence that lionfish measurably affected the density, richness, or composition of prey fishes. It is possible that higher lionfish densities are necessary to detect an effect of lionfish on prey populations at this relatively large spatial scale. Alternatively, negative effects of lionfish on prey could be small, essentially undetectable, and ecologically insignificant at our study sites. Other factors that influence the dynamics of reef fish populations including reef complexity, resource availability, recruitment, predation, and fishing could swamp any effects of lionfish on prey populations.
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spelling pubmed-54467742017-05-30 Invasive lionfish had no measurable effect on prey fish community structure across the Belizean Barrier Reef Hackerott, Serena Valdivia, Abel Cox, Courtney E. Silbiger, Nyssa J. Bruno, John F. PeerJ Biodiversity Invasive lionfish are assumed to significantly affect Caribbean reef fish communities. However, evidence of lionfish effects on native reef fishes is based on uncontrolled observational studies or small-scale, unrepresentative experiments, with findings ranging from no effect to large effects on prey density and richness. Moreover, whether lionfish affect populations and communities of native reef fishes at larger, management-relevant scales is unknown. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of lionfish on coral reef prey fish communities in a natural complex reef system. We quantified lionfish and the density, richness, and composition of native prey fishes (0–10 cm total length) at sixteen reefs along ∼250 km of the Belize Barrier Reef from 2009 to 2013. Lionfish invaded our study sites during this four-year longitudinal study, thus our sampling included fish community structure before and after our sites were invaded, i.e., we employed a modified BACI design. We found no evidence that lionfish measurably affected the density, richness, or composition of prey fishes. It is possible that higher lionfish densities are necessary to detect an effect of lionfish on prey populations at this relatively large spatial scale. Alternatively, negative effects of lionfish on prey could be small, essentially undetectable, and ecologically insignificant at our study sites. Other factors that influence the dynamics of reef fish populations including reef complexity, resource availability, recruitment, predation, and fishing could swamp any effects of lionfish on prey populations. PeerJ Inc. 2017-05-25 /pmc/articles/PMC5446774/ /pubmed/28560093 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3270 Text en ©2017 Hackerott 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 Biodiversity
Hackerott, Serena
Valdivia, Abel
Cox, Courtney E.
Silbiger, Nyssa J.
Bruno, John F.
Invasive lionfish had no measurable effect on prey fish community structure across the Belizean Barrier Reef
title Invasive lionfish had no measurable effect on prey fish community structure across the Belizean Barrier Reef
title_full Invasive lionfish had no measurable effect on prey fish community structure across the Belizean Barrier Reef
title_fullStr Invasive lionfish had no measurable effect on prey fish community structure across the Belizean Barrier Reef
title_full_unstemmed Invasive lionfish had no measurable effect on prey fish community structure across the Belizean Barrier Reef
title_short Invasive lionfish had no measurable effect on prey fish community structure across the Belizean Barrier Reef
title_sort invasive lionfish had no measurable effect on prey fish community structure across the belizean barrier reef
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5446774/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28560093
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3270
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