Abstract

Mounting evidence suggests that reef fish diversity mediates reef resilience through functional redundancy and complementarily. Managing and preserving coral reef fish diversity requires an understanding of the mechanisms and environmental correlates of such diversity. Developing this understanding first requires detailed, spatially-explicit data on biotic, abiotic, and anthropogenic features of reef fish communities. We used the Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment (AGRRA) database in conjunction with freely available anthropogenic and abiotic geographic data to develop a broad assessment of associations between site characteristics and reef fish communities. Rather than attempting to construct a function that defines the species-abundance relationship across sites based a short list of explanatory variables, we first fit a neutral model of species diversity to the data, and subsequently modeled the site-specific residuals from this relationship. Results indicated that latitudinal gradients, fishing pressure, and interactions across tropic levels play an important role in shaping site- specific reef fish diversity. By isolating the influence of site characteristics from the region-wide pattern of community assembly, we were able to directly assess site- specific correlates to marine biodiversity.

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