Small predators dominate fish predation in coral reef communities
Mihalitsis, Michalis, Morais Araujo, Renato A., and Bellwood, David R. (2022) Small predators dominate fish predation in coral reef communities. PLoS Biology, 20 (11). e3001898.
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Abstract
Ecosystem processes are challenging to quantify at a community level, particularly within complex ecosystems (e.g., rainforests, coral reefs). Predation is one of the most important types of species interactions, determining several ecosystem processes. However, while it is widely recognised, it is rarely quantified, especially in aquatic systems. To address these issues, we model predation on fish by fish, in a hyperdiverse coral reef community. We show that body sizes previously examined in fish–fish predation studies (based on a metanalysis), only represent about 5% of likely predation events. The average fish predator on coral reefs is just 3.65 cm; the average fish prey just 1.5 cm. These results call for a shift in the way we view fish predation and its ability to shape the species or functional composition of coral reef fish communities. Considered from a functional group approach, we found general agreement in the distribution of simulated and observed predation events, among both predator and prey functional groups. Predation on coral reefs is a process driven by small fish, most of which are neither seen nor quantified.
Item ID: | 77598 |
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Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
ISSN: | 1545-7885 |
Copyright Information: | © 2022 Mihalitsis et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Funders: | Australian Research Council (ARC) |
Projects and Grants: | ARC FL190100062 |
Date Deposited: | 16 Mar 2023 03:09 |
FoR Codes: | 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 100% |
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