Diversidade funcional de peixes associados a corais em diferentes estados de conservação em ambientes recifais rasos

Abstract

It is known that reef environments hold great biodiversity, being, however, one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to stressors, such as climate change and anthropic actions. Studies that address how organisms behave in a given environment are increasingly relevant, thus, works that involve the functional diversity of communities have become fundamental in determining ecosystem processes and their proper functioning. This study aims to answer what is the effect of the conservation status of corals on the functional diversity of fish associated with two regions with coral communities in a worrying situation. It is expected that the coral conservation status will influence the patterns of functional diversity of associated species, thus affecting their functional diversity. For this, the coral colonies of two reef environments in the state of Paraíba, Areia Vermelha and Seixas reefs, were classified according to the presence of diseases, bleaching, mortality and damage. At the same time, the associated reef fish assemblages were characterized in terms of relative abundance, size structure of individuals and organized into functional categories. From analyzes involving functional diversity indices, despite the non-significance of models 2 and 4 of the statistical test and the few significant correlations shown by the complementary analysis of Quarto Canto, the functional diversity calculations showed low uniformity (FEve) and richness ( FRic) functional for both regions (FEve= 0.42/ FRic= 0.3 – Areia Vermelha and FEve= 0.55/FRic= 1.87 – Seixas), which corroborates with what was presented in other works that, In general, they found that the low coverage of live corals and the reduced complexity of habitat, ends up causing a decrease in the functional diversity of reef fish, also corroborating the hypothesis of this study. In addition, in relation to coral colonies, the study pointed out the dominance of the coral Siderastrea stellata, and that less than half of the coral colonies, for the two study regions, are healthy and a considerable percentage are found with some type of damage, mainly algal growth, which may be indicative of recovering and vulnerable environments. It is concluded that the coral conservation status ends up influencing the patterns of functional diversity of associated fish species, since such reef environments in a worrying situation provide a low functional diversity.