Abstract

Coastal ecosystems are heterogeneous and made up of a mosaic of different communities. Mangrove-associated fish assemblages are responding to a variety of environmental factors, including seascape attributes, like mangrove area, seagrass coverage, and proximity to adjacent habitat patches. Different fish species and life history stages do not respond universally to the same seascape attributes or at the same spatial scale, so multiple scales should be considered when looking at seascape drivers of assemblage composition. IBBEAM has been conducting fish surveys along mangrove shorelines in Southern Biscayne Bay, providing years of fish assemblage data. Seascape attributes were quantified for buffer zones around survey sites of different radii ranging from 50 m to 600 m. Fish assemblages and seascape attributes were analyzed to determine at what spatial scale different seascape attributes had the largest influence on fish assemblage composition.

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