As a region renowned for high biodiversity, endemism and extreme temperature
and salinity levels, the Red Sea is of high ecological interest. Despite this, there is
relatively little literature on basic broad scale characteristics of the biodiversity or overall
reef fish communities and how they change across latitude. We conducted visual
transects recording the abundance of over 200 species of fish from 45 reefs spanning over
1000 km of Saudi Arabian coastline and used hierarchical cluster analysis to find that for
combined depths from 0m-10m across this geographical range, the reef fish communities
are relatively similar. However we find some interesting patterns both at the community
level across depth and latitude as well as in endemic community distributions. We find
that the communities, much like the environmental factors, shift gradually along latitude
but do not show distinct clusters within the range we surveyed (from Al-Wajh in the
north to the Farasan Banks in the south). Numbers of endemic species tend to be higher
in the Thuwal region and further south. This type of baseline data on reef fish distribution
and possible factors that may influence their ranges in the Red Sea are critical for future
scientific studies as well as effective monitoring and in the face of the persistent
anthropogenic influences such as coastal development, overfishing and climate change.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:kaust.edu.sa/oai:repository.kaust.edu.sa:10754/336481 |
| Date | 12 1900 |
| Creators | Roberts, May B. |
| Contributors | Berumen, Michael L., Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) Division, Jones, Burton, Bowen, Brian |
| Source Sets | King Abdullah University of Science and Technology |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Rights | 2015-12-01, At the time of archiving, the student author of this thesis opted to temporarily restrict access to it. The full text of this thesis became available to the public after the expiration of the embargo on 2015-12-01. |
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