TY - JOUR
T1 - The abundance of herbivorous fish on an inshore Red Sea reef following a mass coral bleaching event
AU - Khalil, Maha T.
AU - Cochran, Jesse
AU - Berumen, Michael L.
N1 - KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01
Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank SR Thorrold and MI McCormick for their valuable assistance with data collection in the field and two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the manuscript. J Bouwmeester and E Tyler helped design the study. The project was funded by the Red Sea Research Center at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), and fieldwork was facilitated by the Coastal and Marine Research Core Lab at KAUST. This study was conducted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science awarded to MT Khalil.
PY - 2013/1/8
Y1 - 2013/1/8
N2 - A healthy herbivore community is critical for the ability of a reef to resist and recover from severe disturbances and to regain lost coral cover (i.e., resilience). The densities of the two major herbivorous fish groups (the family Acanthuridae and scarine labrids) were comparatively studied for an inshore reef that was severely impacted by a mass coral bleaching event in 2010 and an unaffected reef within the same region. Densities were found to be significantly higher on the affected reef, most likely due to the high algal densities on that reef. However, densities of herbivores on both reefs were found to be on average about 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than previously published reports from some Pacific reefs and from Red Sea reefs in the Gulf of Aqaba and only slightly higher than Caribbean reefs. Thus, it is predicted that recovery for this reef and similarly affected reefs may be very slow. The protection of herbivores from overfishing and the introduction of other management strategies that maximize reef resilience in Saudi Arabian waters are highly recommended. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
AB - A healthy herbivore community is critical for the ability of a reef to resist and recover from severe disturbances and to regain lost coral cover (i.e., resilience). The densities of the two major herbivorous fish groups (the family Acanthuridae and scarine labrids) were comparatively studied for an inshore reef that was severely impacted by a mass coral bleaching event in 2010 and an unaffected reef within the same region. Densities were found to be significantly higher on the affected reef, most likely due to the high algal densities on that reef. However, densities of herbivores on both reefs were found to be on average about 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than previously published reports from some Pacific reefs and from Red Sea reefs in the Gulf of Aqaba and only slightly higher than Caribbean reefs. Thus, it is predicted that recovery for this reef and similarly affected reefs may be very slow. The protection of herbivores from overfishing and the introduction of other management strategies that maximize reef resilience in Saudi Arabian waters are highly recommended. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10754/562611
UR - http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10641-012-0103-5
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84880837244&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10641-012-0103-5
DO - 10.1007/s10641-012-0103-5
M3 - Article
SN - 0378-1909
VL - 96
SP - 1065
EP - 1072
JO - Environmental Biology of Fishes
JF - Environmental Biology of Fishes
IS - 9
ER -
