This study examined whether movements of fishes across reserve boundaries reduced the difference in density and size of fish between reserve and non-reserve areas. Visual censuses, experimental trapping, habitat measurements and tagging were performed at 10 sites on two nearly contiguous fringing coral reefs at the northern edge of the Barbados Marine Reserve and at 10 sites on the two fringing reefs closest to the boundary in the non-reserve. The visual censuses showed that overall density and size of fishes large enough to be caught in Antillean fish traps were higher on reserve reefs than on non-reserve reefs. The differences in density and size varied considerably among species and were not statistically significant for individual species. In contrast to a previous study, experimental trap catches were not higher in the reserve than in the non-reserve. Visual censuses, trap catches, and their ratio (trappability) were affected by habitat variables. Species mobility, estimated by the maximum distance between locations at which an individual was captured, corrected for the sampling effort at that distance, was highly variable among species (medians 0--116m). For the more mobile species, movements within fringing reefs and between the nearly contiguous reserve reefs was high but extremely rare among reefs separated by expanses of sand and rubble. For this discrete fringing reef system, there is no evidence that movement across the reserve boundary influences the relative density or size of fish between the reserve and non-reserve.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.20560 |
| Date | January 1997 |
| Creators | Chapman, Matthew R. |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Biology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001609532, proquestno: MQ44145, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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