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Research Article Open access CC BY 4.0

Influence of Coral Architecture on Species Richness and the Hierarchical Structuration of Species Abundances in Reef Fish Communities: A Case Study in the Eastern Tropical Pacific

Jean Béguinot

Asian Journal of Environment & Ecology · pp. 1–21 · Published 28 Feb 2019

10.9734/ajee/2018/v8i330075

Abstract

The role of coral reef architecture on species richness and the internal structuration of the associated fish communities has already been addressed several times. The reported results, however, usually remain controversial, possibly because they are based upon incomplete field data issued from partial inventories. Indeed, incomplete samplings are almost unavoidable in practice with such species-rich communities having very uneven distribution of abundances. In this context, the numerical extrapolation of incompletely sampled communities may serve as a reliable surrogate. Accordingly, numerical extrapolations were implemented, here, to compare two fish-communities respectively associated to coral reefs that sharply differ from each-other by their topographic architectures. Both a higher total species richness and a sharper unevenness of species abundances were found to characterize the fish community associated to the more tormented reef habitat exhibiting the more complex architecture. Yet, paradoxically, the true intensity of the underlying process of hierarchical structuring of abundances proves being insensitive to the architecture of coral habitats. This apparent opposition between the unevenness pattern and the underlying structuring process results, in fact, from the additional negative dependence of abundance unevenness upon species richness.

Species diversity ranked abundance distribution evenness incomplete sampling numerical extrapolation Gorgona island Colombia

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