4.6 Article

Invasive lionfish had no measurable effect on prey fish community structure across the Belizean Barrier Reef

期刊

PEERJ
卷 5, 期 -, 页码 -

出版社

PEERJ INC
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3270

关键词

Belize; Community composition; Invasive species; Coral reefs; Lionfish; Belize Barrier Reef; Predators; Species diversity; Predator-prey; Pterois volitans

资金

  1. National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration [8514-08]
  2. National Science Foundation [OCE-0940019]
  3. Rufford Small Grant Foundation [17419-D]
  4. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Invasive lionfish are assumed to significantly affect Caribbean reef fish communities. However, evidence of lionfish effects on native reef fishes is based on uncontrolled observational studies or small-scale, unrepresentative experiments, with findings ranging from no effect to large effects on prey density and richness. Moreover, whether lionfish affect populations and communities of native reef fishes at larger, management-relevant scales is unknown. The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of lionfish on coral reef prey fish communities in a natural complex reef system. We quantified lionfish and the density, richness, and composition of native prey fishes (0-10 cm total length) at sixteen reefs along similar to 250 km of the Belize Barrier Reef from 2009 to 2013. Lionfish invaded our study sites during this four-year longitudinal study, thus our sampling included fish community structure before and after our sites were invaded, i.e., we employed a modified BACI design. We found no evidence that lionfish measurably affected the density, richness, or composition of prey fishes. It is possible that higher lionfish densities are necessary to detect an effect of lionfish on prey populations at this relatively large spatial scale. Alternatively, negative effects of lionfish on prey could be small, essentially undetectable, and ecologically insignificant at our study sites. Other factors that influence the dynamics of reef fish populations including reef complexity, resource availability, recruitment, predation, and fishing could swamp any effects of lionfish on prey populations.

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