Benefits of herbivorous fish outweigh costs of corallivory in coral nurseries placed close to a Kenyan patch reef

---

作者

Ewout G. Knoester¹ , Albertinka J. Murk¹ , Ronald Osinga¹

1. Wageningen University & Research

会议/活动

11th WIOMSA Scientific Symposium, July 2019 (Reduit, Mauritius)

海报摘要

The net effects of herbivorous and coral-predating fish on coral growth, coral condition and fouling in nurseries was investigated by a cage-exclusion experiment in Kenya. A 100-fold increase in macroalgae was found in caged nurseries, which lead to lower growth and condition of the corals. Uncaged nurseries were kept clean predominantly by the grazing of the bristletooth Ctenochaetus striatus. Only 10% of all coral fragments showed some predation marks throughout the study. Overall, this study shows that the benefits of fouling control outweigh the costs of incidental coral predation in coral nurseries. It is recommended to place coral nurseries close to reefs to make use of the benefits provided by the fish community.

关键词

Coral gardening, Reef restoration, Coral predation, Herbivory, Acropora, Fouling

研究领域

Biological Sciences, Ocean Sciences, Ecology and Forestry, Environmental Sciences

参考文献

1. Knoester, E. G., Murk, A. J., & Osinga, R. (2019). Benefits of herbivorous fish outweigh costs of corallivory in coral nurseries placed close to a Kenyan patch reef. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 611, 143-155.

基金

暂无数据

补充材料

1. Published article   Download

附加信息

利益冲突

No competing interests were disclosed.

数据可用性声明

The datasets generated during and / or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

知识共享许可协议

Copyright © 2023 Knoester et al. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.