Journal article
Fish responses to experimental fragmentation of seagrass habitat
PI MacReadie, JS Hindell, GP Jenkins, RM Connolly, MJ Keough
Conservation Biology | Published : 2009
Abstract
Understanding the consequences of habitat fragmentation has come mostly from comparisons of patchy and continuous habitats. Because fragmentation is a process, it is most accurately studied by actively fragmenting large patches into multiple smaller patches. We fragmented artificial seagrass habitats and evaluated the impacts of fragmentation on fish abundance and species richness over time (1 day, 1 week, 1 month). Fish assemblages were compared among 4 treatments: control (single, continuous 9-m 2 patches); fragmented (single, continuous 9-m 2 patches fragmented to 4 discrete 1-m 2 patches); prefragmented/patchy (4 discrete 1-m 2 patches with the same arrangement as fragmented); and distur..
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Funding Acknowledgements
We thank F. Warry, T. Smith, A. O'Brien, R. Watson, J. Ahern, H. Murphy, B. Loughman, G. Ryan, J. Brown, K. Baker, M. Wright, and J. Smith for field assistance, D. Ball for aerial photographs, D. Marshall and 3 anonymous referees for insightful comments on the manuscript, and the people of Roytal Enterprises for constructing ASUs. We are grateful for funding through an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (R.C., J.H., and G.J.), a CSIRO Postgraduate Award (P.M. with D. Smith), a Nancy Millis Postgraduate Research Award (P.M.), an Australian Society for Fish Biology Michael Hall Innovation Award (P.M.), a Holsworth Wildlife Foundation Grant (P.M.), and a Norman Wettenhall Foundation Grant (P.M.). All research was conducted under University of Melbourne Animal Ethics and Department of Primary Industries Fisheries permits. Research was conducted with the facilities of the Victorian Marine Sciences Consortium.