Author: Deron E. BurkepilePublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Coral reef ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 12
Book Description
"Herbivorous fish can benefit reef-building corals by controlling algae that compete with corals for space, but different species of herbivores have different and complementary impacts on benthic communities. Many herbivores are targeted in reef fish fisheries, and these fisheries can strongly impact the structure of herbivore assemblages. Therefore, managers need to know how changes in the herbivore assemblage scale-up to impact the overall health of a coral reef ecosystem. The objective of this study was to obtain quantitative estimates of grazing and browsing capacity for key turf grazing and macroalgal browsing parrotfishes on Caribbean coral reefs, and to use these metrics to quantify the combined grazing impacts of an entire assemblage of parrotfishes. Field work was carried out in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS), where fishing on herbivorous fishes is prohibited and there are large populations of several species of parrotfishes that are rare or absent throughout much of the Caribbean"--Project summary.
