Volume 68

Differential Habitat Use and Reef-Fish Community Organization among the Reef-Top and Slope Morphology Within a Single Shelf-Edge Ecotone in La Parguera, Puerto Rico


Authors
Kilborn, J.P., O.E. Tzadik, and R.S. Appeldoorn
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Date: November, 2015


Pages: 296 - 298


Event: Proceedings of the Sixty eigth Annual Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute


City: Panama City


Country: Panama

Abstract

The shelf-edge coral reef habitats parallel to the coast off La Parguera, Puerto Rico support high abundance and biomass of local flora and fauna (Christensen et al. 2003), even though the entire region’s fisheries resources have histori-cally been overfished. Ecotones tend to support higher biodiversity than their neighboring habitats (Risser 1995), can manifest in many ways on many spatial scales (Risser 1993), and can be difficult to describe. We define an ecotone as the transition zone between two differing, but homogenous, habitat types (Risser 1993), and we extend this definition to a shelf-edge coral reef system. The purpose of this study is to determine if the La Parguera shelf-edge reef system approaching the slope drop-off acts as an ecotone between the continuous and fringing barrier reefs and the adjacent deep mesophotic reefs as evidenced by differential habitat use by the resident animals.

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