Effect of the removal of cleaner fish on the abundance and species composition of reef fish |
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Authors: | Alexandra S Grutter |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Marine Biology, James Cook University of North Queensland, Townsville, Qld., 4811, Australia, AU |
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Abstract: | The ecological significance of cleaner fish on coral reefs was investigated. I removed all cleaner fish, Labroides dimidiatus, from eight small reefs, measured the subsequent effect on the abundance and species composition of all reef fish after 3
and 6 months, and compared it with eight control reefs with cleaner fish. The removal of cleaner fish had no detectable effect
on the total abundance of fish on reefs and the total number of fish species at both times. Multivariate analysis by non-metric
multidimensional scaling and ANOSIM pairwise tests based on 191 fish species revealed no effect of cleaners on the community
structure of fish. Similar results were obtained using principal components analysis on subsets of the data using the 33 most
common fish species and the 15 most abundant species (≥5 individuals per reef ) with both log10 (x + 1) transformed data and with fish numbers standardized for abundance. This study demonstrates that the removal of cleaner
fish for 6 months did not result in fish suffering increased mortality nor in fish leaving reefs to seek cleaning elsewhere.
Received: 28 October 1996 / Accepted: 7 February 1997 |
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Keywords: | Cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus Coral reef fish abundance Fish behavior Cleaning symbiosis |
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