Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles
The Structure of Coral Communities at Hurghada in the Northern Red Sea
ORCID
0000-0002-6003-9324
ResearcherID
F-8807-2011
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Marine Ecology
ISSN
0173-9565
Publication Date
12-1994
Keywords
Coral community structure, Red Sea, Scleractinia, Coral reef, Diversity
Abstract
The community structure of hard and soft corals, with an emphasis on hard corals, was determined by means of line-transects on 9 on-and off-shore reefs of different type and different wave exposure in the Northern Red Sea near Hurghada in Egypt. Coral communities were found to differentiate along a horizontal wind- and wave-exposure gradient. Exposed communities were dominated by Acropora species, sheltered communities by Porites species, and semi-exposed communities by Millepora species. Also, vertical within-reef zonations following a depth gradient were observed; these were unique for each exposure-determined community type. Average transect diversity was highest on semi-exposed reefs, lowest on sheltered reefs. Reef slopes were more diverse than other reef zones. The observed community structure was compared with data from the literature, and widely distributed, roughly comparable hard and soft coral communities were identified.
DOI
10.1111/j.1439-0485.1994.tb00054.x
Volume
15
Issue
3-4
First Page
213
Last Page
231
NSUWorks Citation
Bernhard Riegl and Branko Velimirov. 1994. The Structure of Coral Communities at Hurghada in the Northern Red Sea .Marine Ecology , (3-4) : 213 -231. https://nsuworks.nova.edu/occ_facarticles/233.
Comments
©1994 Blackwell Verlag GmbH