Relationship of Reef Fish Assemblages and Topographic Complexity on Southeastern Florida Coral Reef Habitats

Authors

Brian K. Walker, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow
Lance K. B. Jordan, Nova Southeastern University
Richard E. Spieler, Nova Southeastern UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Journal of Coastal Research

ISSN

0749-0208

Publication Date

Fall 2009

Keywords

Seascape ecology, Habitat complexity, Rugosity, Coral reef fish, Lidar, GIS

Abstract

Reef fish assemblage relationships with in situ and lidar topographic measurements across the seascape were analyzed to evaluate the possibility of using lidar metrics as a proxy for prediction models. In situ topographic complexity (i.e., linear rugosity) was measured from 346 point-count fish surveys spanning the reef seascape. Lidar topographic measurements (i.e., surface rugosity, elevation, and volume) were obtained from a high-resolution lidar bathymetric dataset of each survey's footprint. The survey sites were characterized by an independently derived benthic habitat map. Reef fish abundance and species richness appeared to increase with increasing topographic complexity. Although significant, the relationship was weak. Habitat characterization showed that these relationships changed across the seascape. The relationship between topographic complexity and species richness was more pronounced in shallow habitats, whereas, topographic complexity related more closely to abundance in offshore habitats. In situ rugosity measurement yielded the best explanation of fish assemblage structure parameters, but the weaker lidar metric correlations followed similar trends. Accordingly, lidar-measured topographic complexity may be a useful metric for reef fish distributional models. Such predictive models could have many scientific and management applications including: estimating fish stocks, viewing data trends across the seascape, and designing marine protected areas. However, better understanding of the appropriate spatial scale, measurement scale, and fish operational scale is needed, as well as more research on the dynamics of how reef fishes relate to topographic complexity and other ecological factors influencing distributions across the seascape.

DOI

10.2112/SI53-005.1

Volume

25

Issue

Special Issue 53

First Page

39

Last Page

48

Comments

©2009 Coastal Education and Research Foundation

Additional Comments

NOAA award #: NA03NOS4260046

NSUWorks Citation

Brian K. Walker, Lance K. B. Jordan, and Richard E. Spieler. 2009. Relationship of Reef Fish Assemblages and Topographic Complexity on Southeastern Florida Coral Reef Habitats .Journal of Coastal Research , (Special Issue 53) : 39 -48. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/occ_facarticles/134.