Abundance, diversity, and feeding behavior of coral reef butterflyfishes at Lord Howe Island
Pratchett, Morgan S., Hoey, Andrew S., Cvitanovic, Christopher, Hobbs, Jean-Paul, and Fulton, Christopher J. (2014) Abundance, diversity, and feeding behavior of coral reef butterflyfishes at Lord Howe Island. Ecology and Evolution, 4 (18). pp. 3612-3625.
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Abstract
Endemic species are assumed to have a high risk of extinction because their restricted geographic range is often associated with low abundance and high ecological specialization. This study examines the abundance of Chaetodon butterflyfishes at Lord Howe Island in the south-west Pacific, and compares interspecific differences in local abundance to the feeding behavior and geographic range of these species. Contrary to expected correlations between abundance and geographic range, the single most abundant species of butterflyfish was Chaetodon tricinctus, which is endemic to Lord Howe Island and adjacent reefs; densities of C.tricinctus (14.1 ± 2.1 SE fish per 200m^2) were >3 times higher than the next most abundant butterflyfish (Chaetodon melannotus), and even more abundant than many other geographically widespread species. Dietary breadth for the five dominant butterflyfishes at Lord Howe Island was weakly and generally negative correlated with abundance. The endemic C.tricinctus was a distinct outlier in this relationship, though our extensive feeding observations suggest some issues with the measurements of dietary breadth for this species. Field observations revealed that all bites taken on benthic substrates by C.tricinctus were from scleractinian corals, but adults rarely, if ever, took bites from the benthos, suggesting that they may be feeding nocturnally and/or using mid-water prey, such as plankton. Alternatively, the energetic demands of C.tricinctus may be fundamentally different to other coral-feeding butterflyfishes. Neither dietary specialization nor geographic range accounts for interspecific variation in abundance of coral reef butterflyfishes at Lord Howe Island, while much more work on the foraging behavior and population dynamics of C.tricinctus will be required to understand its' abundance at this location.
| Item ID: | 36239 |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2045-7758 |
| Keywords: | Chaetodontidae, corallivore, disturbance, ecological function, endemism, schooling, selectivity, specialization |
| Additional Information: | © 2014 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Funders: | Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies |
| Date Deposited: | 12 Nov 2014 12:13 |
| FoR Codes: | 06 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 0602 Ecology > 060205 Marine and Estuarine Ecology (incl Marine Ichthyology) @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 96 ENVIRONMENT > 9608 Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity > 960808 Marine Flora, Fauna and Biodiversity @ 100% |
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