R. Grober-Dunsmore | USGS Science

USGS2007

Influence of landscape structure on reef fish assemblages

Management of tropical marine environments calls for interdisciplinary studies and innovative methodologies that consider processes occurring over broad spatial scales. We investigated relationships between landscape structure and reef fish assemblage structure in the US Virgin Islands. Measures of landscape structure were transformed into a reduced set of composite indices using principal component analyses (PCA) to synthesize data on the spatial patterning of the landscape structure of the study reefs. However, composite indices (e.g., habitat diversity) were not particularly informative for predicting reef fish assemblage structure. Rather, relationships were interpreted more easily when functional groups of fishes were related to individual habitat features. In particular, multiple reef fish parameters were strongly associated with reef context. Fishes responded to benthic habitat structure at multiple spatial scales, with various groups of fishes each correlated to a unique suite of variables. Accordingly, future experiments should be designed to test functional relationships based on the ecology of the organisms of interest. Our study demonstrates that landscape-scale habitat features influence reef fish communities, illustrating promise in applying a landscape ecology approach to better understand factors that structure coral reef ecosystems. Furthermore, our findings may prove useful in design of spatially-based conservation approaches such as marine protected areas (MPAs), because landscape-scale metrics may serve as proxies for areas with high species diversity and abundance within the coral reef landscape. ?? 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Landscape Ecology↗

USGS2006

Potential inhibitors to recovery of Acropora palmata populations in St. John, US Virgin Islands

Populations of Acropora palmata in the Caribbean were decimated in the 1970s and 1980s, with little apparent signs of recovery until the late 1990s. Here, we document an increase in A. palmata colonies between 2001 and 2003 at 8 of 11 monitoring sites in waters adjacent to the island of St. John, US Virgin Islands. The shallow waters along the NW coast of the island exhibited the greatest increase in colony abundance, perhaps due to greater larval supply and/or conditions that favor settlement and subsequent survivorship. Of concern, however, is the lack of survival of large colonies (at all sites), which are most frequently affected by stressors (e.g. Coralliophila abbreviata, damselfishes, active disease) and are most likely to be remnants (colonies with discontinuous, living coral-tissue over an existing coral framework). Predation by C. abbreviata and active coral disease may directly contribute to the development of these remnant colonies. In addition, we recorded damage to colonies attributed to damselfishes and raise the possibility that these territorial reef-inhabitants act as vectors in the transmission of coral disease. While the incidence of disease around St. John is generally low, it may persist as a ubiquitous, chronic stress. Finally, because stressors are more prevalent on large colonies and in high-density stands, they have the potential to inhibit the recovery of A. palmata populations to their historic condition. ?? Inter-Research 2006.

Marine Ecology Progress Series↗