Abstract
Despite considerable attention to the role of parrotfish assemblages in maintaining coral reef ecosystem integrity, little is known about the factors affecting parrotfish settlement, which could play an important role in structuring parrotfish assemblages. Here, I expand on a previous study that sought to identify environmental correlates of the temporal patterns of recruitment of Sparisoma parrotfishes onto standardized settlement units sampled at 52 consecutive 10-day intervals over an uninterrupted 17-month period on the west coast of Barbados (W.I.). By (1) including previously unavailable satellite-derived island-wide current speed data in the analyses and (2) using a more flexible (non-linear) analytical framework, the re-analysis increased the variance explained from 24% to 74%. Furthermore, island-wide current speed had stronger predictive power than all of the previously identified environmental correlates of Sparisoma recruitment, i.e. sea surface temperature and chlorophyll a concentration, and lunar phase, underscoring a dominant role for large-scale, transport-related physical processes in driving parrotfish settlement. Relationships between Sparisoma recruitment and the environmental correlates were better explained as non-linear functions, with a hump-shaped relationship for current speed. Most variability in current speed reflected external forcing due to the passage through Barbados of a large, slow-moving, low-salinity intrusion of South American riverine origin. Considering the high recruitment variance explained and that satellite-derived data on key environmental correlates are publicly available, prediction of temporal patterns of parrotfish settlement in Barbados might be more feasible than previously expected.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the staff of the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PODAAC) for their assistance with sea surface current data. I am also deeply indebted to all those who made the original research project possible: D. L. Kramer and W. Hunte for their overall support; the many volunteer field assistants; the staff of the Bellairs Research Institute of McGill University and University of the West Indies at Cave Hill for logistical support; B. Victor for specimen identification; and J. Horrocks and B. Selliah for field accommodation. The original research project was partially funded by UWI grants to W. Hunte and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery grant to D. L. Kramer Additional support came from a PADI-AWARE project grant and a Small Scheme grant from the Fisheries Society of the British Isles to H.V. The Waddell Aquatics Dive Shop in Montreal partially sponsored some of the diving equipment. Two anonymous reviewers provided useful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
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Vallès, H. Parrotfish recruitment revisited: a key role for sea surface currents. Environ Biol Fish 100, 1649–1657 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-017-0673-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-017-0673-3