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Change of benthic communities at Tiaoshi coral reef, southern Taiwan

Coral community at Tiaoshi in Nanwan Bay, southern Taiwan was originally dominated by branching Acropora corals which formed some monopolized patches. The community had been changed apparently on a local scale (<2 km) since 1994. Several Acropora patches were almost completely replaced by the solitary sea anemone Condylactis sp. after man-made and typhoon disturbances. However, sea anemones were apparently decreased in 2002. To understand the change of the benthic communities, three areas, including Anemone-dominated, Coral-recovery and Acropora-dominated, at depths of 6 to 10 m were selected and monitored by permanent transects from 2003 to 2005. Each site included three replicate patches. At Anemone-dominated area, the mean cover of sea anemone ranged from 24.6 to 15.3% and that of the hard corals was low with 1.4 to 3.9%. At Coral-recovery area, the mean cover of the hard corals was significantly increased from 21.3 to 38.9%, while macroalgae was significantly decreased from 20.7 to 6.1% and sea anemone was low with 1.4 to 3.0%. At Acropora-dominated area, the cover of the hard corals was ranged from 70.0 to 56.6% while macroalgae and anemone was 1.1 - 3.4% and 3.5 - 4.7%, respectively. In general, the results showed that anemone and macroalgae were decreased and corals were recovery. In addition, the diversity index of coral genera at Anemone-dominated area was higher due to coral recruitment in 2004 and 2005. The new recruits were dominated by Montipora stellata.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0827105-213208
Date27 August 2005
CreatorsWu, Bing-je
ContributorsLi-Lian Liu, Chang-Feng Dai, Lee-Shing Fang, Tung-Yung Fan
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-0827105-213208
Rightsunrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

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