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Determinants of the steep species–area relationship of coral reef fishes

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Abstract

The increase in species richness with area is known as the species–area relationship (SPAR). Although several mutually non-exclusive processes may produce the SPAR, the null, often ignored, hypothesis states that a SPAR can be generated by random placement alone. The log–log-transformed SPAR of coral reef fishes on small patch-reefs revealed a steep slope of 0.55. However, this slope was dependent on the cumulative area of the reef examined and was therefore affected by random placement. After statistically removing the contribution of random placement from the SPAR, the slope was estimated to be 0.21. This is consistent with estimates from other, mostly terrestrial, systems. Furthermore, a randomization procedure, where the probability of fishes to reach a patch was proportional to reef area, showed that the field measured SPAR did not differ from random placement. In addition, fish assemblages on species poor reefs did not form subsets of species rich reefs (i.e., no nestedness) beyond that expected from random placement. Steep log–log-transformed SPARs can be formed by random placement alone, indicating that caution should be used when assigning an ecological meaning to SPARs generated from small spatial scales.

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Acknowledgments

Special thanks to M.L. Rosenzweig, M. Kiflawi, Z. Abramsky, O. Ovadia and several anonymous reviewers for fruitful discussion and constructive comments, and to O. Ben Shafrut for help with diving. This study was partly supported by the PADI foundation, the Lerner-Gray Memorial Fund and the Kreitman foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Department of Life-Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, PO Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel

    J. Belmaker, N. Ben-Moshe, Y. Ziv & N. Shashar

  2. The H. Steinitz Marine Biology Laboratory, The Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences, PO Box 469, Eilat, 88103, Israel

    J. Belmaker, N. Ben-Moshe & N. Shashar

  3. The Department of Evolution Systematics and Ecology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Givat Ram, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    N. Shashar

Authors
  1. J. Belmaker
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  2. N. Ben-Moshe
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  3. Y. Ziv
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  4. N. Shashar
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Correspondence to J. Belmaker.

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Communicated by Biology Editor M.I. McCormick.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 4

Table 4 All 121 reef-ssociated fish species sited on the patch reefs and used for the analysis
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Belmaker, J., Ben-Moshe, N., Ziv, Y. et al. Determinants of the steep species–area relationship of coral reef fishes. Coral Reefs 26, 103–112 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-006-0162-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-006-0162-1

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