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Recruitment of Marine Sessile Fauna in Kenting Coral Reefs

The fate of coral reef biodiversity could be predicted from the extant situation and understanding the possible temporal and spatial mechanisms. Among the many hypotheses explaining the biodiversity, the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis is the most often tested. It proposed that the frequencies and intensities of disturbance determine the biological species diversity of a habitat; here seasonal recruitment is not considered an important factor. We propose Seasonal Recruitment Hypothesis here with three important characteristics and predictions: there is different assemblages of recruitment after disturbance in different seasons; the following succession is lead by these initial assemblages and thus have different patches for spaces created in different seasons. Mosaic of patches, each with different history, combined to form a high diversity ecosystem of coral reefs. In this investigation, the first hypothesis that recruitment assemblage is different among season, is tested.
The study site is located in the coral reef of Kenting in southern Taiwan. We put out recruitment panels to simulate space generated after disturbance, at two-month intervals; then we checked the abundance of sessile fauna on the inside and outside surface of plates. A total of 17 zoological taxa was identified and numbered. Then Primer was used to ordinate the assemblages of recruitment from different seasons. A significant seasonal effect was found. Thus the first stage of the Seasonal Recruitment Hypothesis was supported.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0910107-031254
Date10 September 2007
CreatorsLin, Yi-han
ContributorsHsing-Juh Lin, Tung-Yung Fan, Tse-Min Lee, Ker-yea Soong
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0910107-031254
Rightsoff_campus_withheld, Copyright information available at source archive

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