The relationship between Coral reef fish and habitat structure on coral reefs at Kut Islands, Trat province.

Ason Meenapha

Abstract


The relationships between coral reef fishes and habitat structure on coral reefs at Kut islands, Trat province, were carried out on 10 stations during June 2019. The average area covers of living and dead corals were 42.4% and 26.2% respectively. The most dominant coral species was Porites lutea (55.8%). There were 138 species from 32 families of coral reef fishes be recorded. ??Spearman's rank correlation revealed that fish diversity has negative relationships with living coral cover (r = - 0.86, P <0.05). The species richness of fishes, on the other hand, had a positive relationship with dead coral cover (r = 0.75, P <0.05). Sand and rocks, however, were not correlate with coral reef fishes. The relationships between reef fishes and reef habitat structure remains varies. However, this study found a trend that fish species composition may different according to the structure of reefs habitat. Therefore, the species composition of coral reef fish and coral species on a wider area with different environment factors, especially salinity, should be investigated.


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