Scale and Community Structure of Coral Reef Fishes: A Long-Term Study of a Large Artificial Reef

Abstract

The fish comn~unity of a large artificial reef made In 1960 of 800 concrete blocks in a seagrass bed on the south coast of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, was studied by comparing a series of visual censuses (1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979) with each other and with a 1962 total-poison station collection Discounting the presence of some cryptic species in the poison station that would not normally be seen in visual censuses (N = 10), as well as discounting seagrass-bed residents and roaming species only transient on the reef (N = 13), all of the censuses and the poison station (range 31-40 spp.) were found to be similar (Spearman Rank Correlations: all p C .01). This stability stands in contrast to the apparent unpredictability reported for smaller artificial and natural reef structures on the Great Barrier Reef (Sale and Dybdahl 1975, 1978; We interpret our results as evidence for orderly Interactions as important factors in the determination of community structure, and suggest that short-tern~ studies of small reefs lack the resolving power to detect this type of evidence.