Abstract
Spawning migrations are an important life-history event for many species of commercially important tropical reef fishes and decapod crustaceans. Spawning aggregations are highly predictable events in which hundreds to thousands of individuals migrate across multiple habitats to converge on specific sites for reproduction. Species that undergo spawning migrations provide a potential mechanism to interlink and possibly influence local food webs along their migratory pathways and at aggregation sites. The rapidly declining condition of many aggregating species world-wide emphasizes the urgency with which we need to increase our under-standing of how spawning aggregations function within complex coral reef and other tropical ecosystems. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of reef fish and decapod crustacean spawning aggregations, including mechanisms under-lying their timing and periodicity, characteristics of spawning aggregation sites, and the spatial and temporal patterns of movement and migration. This overview provides the foundation for a discussion of the habitat linkages and potential trophic interactions that occur during migration and spawning, and highlights the existing gaps in our knowledge of how spawning aggregations function and their importance to ecological processes and fisheries sustainability.
Keywords
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Acknowledgments
Support to RS Nemeth for preparation of this book chapter was provided by the Friday Harbor Laboratory’s Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center, the University of the Virgin Islands, and the Virgin Islands-Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (VI-EPSCoR) under National Science Foundation (NSF) grant no. 0346483. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the NSF. Special thanks to P Colin, Y Sadovy, and M Domeier for providing useful comments that greatly improved this chapter. This is contribution # 53 from the University of the Virgin Islands’ Center for Marine and Environmental Studies.
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Nemeth, R.S. (2009). Dynamics of Reef Fish and Decapod Crustacean Spawning Aggregations: Underlying Mechanisms, Habitat Linkages, and Trophic Interactions. In: Nagelkerken, I. (eds) Ecological Connectivity among Tropical Coastal Ecosystems. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2406-0_4
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