Abstract

Today the Florida peninsula provides habitat for one of the most complex ichthyofaunas in the western Atlantic. High Floridian biodiversity and habitat complexity is principally due to Florida's geomorphology resulting in transitional climates associated with regional oceanografic currents wich vary significantly around the peninsula. The majority of Floridian fish species are tropical, having migrated to the peninsula only recently, during Holocene submergence of the Florida platform. These tropical invaders now form a heterogeneous group that often numerically dominate fish communities in southeastern Florida. Many tropical species form the basis for major recreational and commercial fisheries. Most fishery species life histories require estuarine, coastal or shelf edge spawning often with passive/active movement of pelagic eggs and larvae within estuaries, or across continental shelves and into, or from oceanic waters. Entrainment within oceanic currents allows larval transport for considerable distances downstream, loss of larvae from Florida waters, larval recruitment from Caribbean Provincial waters to Florida, or recruitment from Florida back to Floridian waters via eddies, gyres and meanders.\The differential distribution of suitable habitats and hydrological/climatic environments around the Florida peninsula creates differential faunal associations with the Caribbean Province, consequently, successfulfishery larval recruitment from Caribbean. The Floridian marine and coastal environment can be divided into 26 faunal - biogeographic regions which support distinct communities of warm temperate, eurythermic and stenothermic tropical faunas. Using the speciose family serranidae as an example, the origination of various species from various regions of the western Atlantic can by hypothesized. These analyses give additional perspective on the evolution of the Florida fish fauna and its relationship with the Caribbean Sea. The differential association of Florida fishery species with the Caribbean Sea has major implications for regional and local fishery management and critical fishery habitat assessment.

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