Effects of habitat relocation on fish community structure- a case study

Local habitat structure and the environment in which it occurs are some of the key components in the development of fish communities. In this case study we examined a snapshot of their relative role following relocation of four artificial reefs (ARs) from a coral reef environment to a sandy area with adjacent sea grass beds. Monitoring the fish communities on ARs and in the surrounding areas revealed that in their new locations, the ARs contained greater fish richness and abundance, with more diurnal than nocturnal fish, but their feeding guilds were similar to those of fish in the reef location. A multivariate analysis showed that the ARs had distinctly different fish assemblage from those of their surroundings regardless of their location. Nonetheless, we identified an effect of the surroundings on AR fish community assemblage. We propose that on a meso-scale, fish community structure is primarily dependent on the properties of the AR rather than on those of the surrounding environment.