engleski

Combining Methods to Better Estimate Total Fish Richness on Temperate Reefs: The Case of a Mediterranean Coralligenous Cliff

Coralligenous habitat is considered as one of the most important special habitat types in theMediterranean ; however, due to its inaccessibility, little is known about it, although it is consideredas one of the Mediterranean’s richest habitats in terms of species. Due to a low number of studies, itwas presumed that the richness of coralligenous fish assemblages is underestimated using traditionalvisual census methods which are not applicable to the deep, steep, and vertical slopes of coralligenouscliffs and do not capture exhaustively cryptobenthic species commonly found in this habitat. Thispaper aims at producing a more complete assessment of fish assemblages on a coralligenous cliff bycombining different methods, particularly the deep vertical transect visual census and square withanesthetics method. A total of 76 fish species were recorded on a single coralligenous cliff, supportingthe opinion that coralligenous cliffs are important Mediterranean biodiversity hotspots. The analysisof species traits between species recorded by the different methods showed how complementarythey are to better describe species compositions. Hence, the result of this study demonstrates that thecombined use of methods is essential for a more exhaustive description of the whole fish communitystructure and for accurate estimates of the abundance and diversity patterns, particularly in complexhabitats such as coralligenous cliffs.

coralligenous ; fish assemblages ; cryptobenthic ; deep vertical transect ; visual census ; anesthetics

nije evidentirano