Abstract
Mangroves are regarded as important settlement grounds and nurseries for fishes due to the sheltered nature of these ecosystems. To identify the drivers of temporal variations in fish assemblages, seasonal variations of fish assemblages and environmental variables were investigated in Nanliu River Estuary, China, from July 2019 to May 2020. In total, 17,680 individuals weighing 24,724.73 g belonging to 23 families and 45 species were collected. The dominant species were Ambassis urotaenia, Mugil cephalus, Coptodon zillii, Gambusia affinis, and Bostrychus sinensis. Fish assemblages were significantly different in seasonal periodicity according to the results of nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA). Kruskal–Wallis test results revealed that species richness, fish abundance, and biomass were significantly different, seasonally. The highest number of fish specimens captured was recorded in winter and summer, while the highest biomass was observed in autumn. Different ecological types of fish utilized mangroves in different ways. Hence, the findings in this study are instrumental in understanding and the conservation of mangroves even coastal wetland and fish resources in the process of mangrove restorations.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Guangxi Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution Control Theory and Technology for Science and Education Combined with Science and Technology Innovation Base for their vital help during samplings. Thanks to Dr. Liu Qi for improving this manuscript and thanks to Saeed Rad for helping to polish this manuscript.
Funding
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: U20A2087), Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi Province (2018GXNSFAA281022), the Guangxi “Bagui Scholar” Construction Project (2016A10), and “Chunhui Planning” Project from the Ministry of Education, China.
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L.L. Huang and X. Huang developed the basic idea and designed the investigation. X. Huang, L.L. Huang, H. Liu, J.L. Chen, and L.Y. Gui performed the sampling collection and processing. X. Huang and H. Liu performed the data analyses. X. Huang led the original writing. L.L. Huang reviewed and made corrections to improve the paper. All authors read the full paper and agreed to its publication.
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Huang, X., Liu, H., Chen, J. et al. Drivers of temporal variations in fish assemblages from mangrove creeks in Beihai, southern China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 47070–47081 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19029-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19029-w