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Life Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2017

Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Nova Southeastern University

Florida Reef Tract

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Reef Fish Assemblage Biogeography Along The Florida Reef Tract, Cory Ames Nov 2017

Reef Fish Assemblage Biogeography Along The Florida Reef Tract, Cory Ames

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the biogeography of reef fish assemblages is paramount to reef conservation, management, and conducting appropriate population survey designs. Reef fish assemblages are a multispecies complex of reef-associated fish and are shaped by multiple environmental and biological factors (e.g. temperature, depth, benthic habitat, and topographic relief), which determine the species constituents residing in an area. Assemblages typically change with latitude where the number of families, genera, and/or densities of species specific to warmer climates decrease poleward into colder climate regimes. The Florida Reef Tract (FRT) extends for 595 km from the Dry Tortugas in the south-west to Martin County in …


Non‐Linear Thresholds Characterize The Relationship Between Reef Fishes And Mangrove Habitat, Geoffrey S. Shideler, Rafael J. Araujo, Brian K. Walker, Jeremiah Blondeau, Joseph E. Serafy Sep 2017

Non‐Linear Thresholds Characterize The Relationship Between Reef Fishes And Mangrove Habitat, Geoffrey S. Shideler, Rafael J. Araujo, Brian K. Walker, Jeremiah Blondeau, Joseph E. Serafy

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

A significant obstacle to evaluating the importance of mangrove habitat to coral reef fishes has been the difficulty of disentangling its effects from other subtidal/nearshore habitats or human population pressures. Florida's seascape, unlike most others, has been extensively surveyed and mapped, and there are reliable estimates of human population density. Despite many studies that have correlated reef fish abundance with nearby mangrove habitat, some researchers continue to question the importance of mangroves to reef fishes. Previous studies that have investigated the mangrove–reef fish subsidy effect have applied methods that either compared averages or examined linear relationships; yet there is a …