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Reef fish communities are spooked by scuba surveys and may take hours to recover

Ecological monitoring programs typically aim to detect changes in the abundance of species of conservation concern or which reflect system status. Coral reef fish assemblages are functionally important for reef health and these are most commonly monitored using underwater visual surveys (UVS) by div...

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Autores principales: Emslie, Michael J., Cheal, Alistair J., MacNeil, M. Aaron, Miller, Ian R., Sweatman, Hugh P.A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5971101/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29844998
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4886
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author Emslie, Michael J.
Cheal, Alistair J.
MacNeil, M. Aaron
Miller, Ian R.
Sweatman, Hugh P.A.
author_facet Emslie, Michael J.
Cheal, Alistair J.
MacNeil, M. Aaron
Miller, Ian R.
Sweatman, Hugh P.A.
author_sort Emslie, Michael J.
collection PubMed
description Ecological monitoring programs typically aim to detect changes in the abundance of species of conservation concern or which reflect system status. Coral reef fish assemblages are functionally important for reef health and these are most commonly monitored using underwater visual surveys (UVS) by divers. In addition to estimating numbers, most programs also collect estimates of fish lengths to allow calculation of biomass, an important determinant of a fish’s functional impact. However, diver surveys may be biased because fishes may either avoid or are attracted to divers and the process of estimating fish length could result in fish counts that differ from those made without length estimations. Here we investigated whether (1) general diver disturbance and (2) the additional task of estimating fish lengths affected estimates of reef fish abundance and species richness during UVS, and for how long. Initial estimates of abundance and species richness were significantly higher than those made on the same section of reef after diver disturbance. However, there was no evidence that estimating fish lengths at the same time as abundance resulted in counts different from those made when estimating abundance alone. Similarly, there was little consistent bias among observers. Estimates of the time for fish taxa that avoided divers after initial contact to return to initial levels of abundance varied from three to 17 h, with one group of exploited fishes showing initial attraction to divers that declined over the study period. Our finding that many reef fishes may disperse for such long periods after initial contact with divers suggests that monitoring programs should take great care to minimise diver disturbance prior to surveys.
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spelling pubmed-59711012018-05-29 Reef fish communities are spooked by scuba surveys and may take hours to recover Emslie, Michael J. Cheal, Alistair J. MacNeil, M. Aaron Miller, Ian R. Sweatman, Hugh P.A. PeerJ Animal Behavior Ecological monitoring programs typically aim to detect changes in the abundance of species of conservation concern or which reflect system status. Coral reef fish assemblages are functionally important for reef health and these are most commonly monitored using underwater visual surveys (UVS) by divers. In addition to estimating numbers, most programs also collect estimates of fish lengths to allow calculation of biomass, an important determinant of a fish’s functional impact. However, diver surveys may be biased because fishes may either avoid or are attracted to divers and the process of estimating fish length could result in fish counts that differ from those made without length estimations. Here we investigated whether (1) general diver disturbance and (2) the additional task of estimating fish lengths affected estimates of reef fish abundance and species richness during UVS, and for how long. Initial estimates of abundance and species richness were significantly higher than those made on the same section of reef after diver disturbance. However, there was no evidence that estimating fish lengths at the same time as abundance resulted in counts different from those made when estimating abundance alone. Similarly, there was little consistent bias among observers. Estimates of the time for fish taxa that avoided divers after initial contact to return to initial levels of abundance varied from three to 17 h, with one group of exploited fishes showing initial attraction to divers that declined over the study period. Our finding that many reef fishes may disperse for such long periods after initial contact with divers suggests that monitoring programs should take great care to minimise diver disturbance prior to surveys. PeerJ Inc. 2018-05-24 /pmc/articles/PMC5971101/ /pubmed/29844998 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4886 Text en © 2018 Emslie 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 Animal Behavior
Emslie, Michael J.
Cheal, Alistair J.
MacNeil, M. Aaron
Miller, Ian R.
Sweatman, Hugh P.A.
Reef fish communities are spooked by scuba surveys and may take hours to recover
title Reef fish communities are spooked by scuba surveys and may take hours to recover
title_full Reef fish communities are spooked by scuba surveys and may take hours to recover
title_fullStr Reef fish communities are spooked by scuba surveys and may take hours to recover
title_full_unstemmed Reef fish communities are spooked by scuba surveys and may take hours to recover
title_short Reef fish communities are spooked by scuba surveys and may take hours to recover
title_sort reef fish communities are spooked by scuba surveys and may take hours to recover
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5971101/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29844998
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4886
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