Benthic community succession on artificial and natural coral reefs in the northern Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea

PloS One
Emily HigginsAnna Metaxas

Abstract

Evaluating the efficacy of artificial structures in enhancing or sustaining biodiversity on tropical coral reefs is key to assessing their role in reef conservation or management. Here, we compare spatial and temporal patterns of colonization and succession of the benthic assemblage on settlement collectors (ceramic tiles) in a 13-mo mensurative experiment on a suspended artificial reef, a seafloor artificial reef, and two nearby natural reefs at Eilat, Gulf of Aqaba. We also conducted a concurrent 7-mo manipulative experiment on the suspended reef and one of the natural reefs, and monitored fish feeding behaviour on experimental collectors, to examine effects of large mobile consumers on these patterns. In both experiments, taxonomic composition as percent planar cover for the whole community or biomass for the invertebrate component differed between collector topsides, dominated by a filamentous algal matrix, and shaded undersides with a profuse assemblage of suspension- or filter-feeding invertebrates. In the mensurative experiment, we found differences in final community and invertebrate composition between sites, which clustered according to reef type (artificial vs. natural) for collector undersides. Invertebrate biomass ...Continue Reading

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Citations

Sep 10, 2020·Marine Drugs·Ebaa M El-HossaryUsama Ramadan Abdelmohsen

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
scraping

Software Mentioned

PERMANOVA
GoPro Studio
ImageJ64
PERMDISP
nMDS
Primer
Minitab

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