Predation Effects on Survival of Coral-Reef Fish Recruits

珊瑚礁鱼的出现是因为当地种群占据了成片的栖息地。这些种群构成了最特殊的海洋生物组合之一的基础，当地共存着数百个物种。我们对限制种群数量的生态过程的了解很少，历史上一直偏向于竞争和最近的补充(浮游幼体定居后幼鱼出现在珊瑚礁上的过程)的研究。由于各种物流条件的限制，其他工艺还没有得到深入的研究。捕食尤其如此，在其他海洋、淡水和陆地群落中，这已被证明是一个极其重要的过程。Hixon博士将研究捕食限制本地珊瑚鱼种群数量这一假设的两个推论：(1)新定居的鱼类在迁徙和/或暂时捕食鱼类的珊瑚礁上的生存能力将得到提高；(2)这些对生存能力的影响将随着补充的程度而变化。这将通过在两个地点对孤立的片状珊瑚礁上的捕食性鱼类进行受控实验操作来进行测试：巴哈马的李斯托金岛和美属维尔京群岛的圣托马斯。

Coral reef fishes occur as local populations occupying patches of habitat. These populations comprise the basis of one of the most speciose assemblages of marine organisms, with hundreds of species coexisting locally. Our knowledge of the ecolgical processes that limit population size is scant and historically has been biased toward studies of competition, and more recently, recruitment (the process of young fish appearing on a reef following settlement of planktonic larvae). Due to a variety of logistic constraints, other processes have not been thoroughly studied. This is especially true of predation, which has been demonstrated to be an extremely important process in other marine, freshwater, and terrestrial communities. Dr. Hixon will investigate two corollaries of the hypothesis that predation limits local population sizes in reef-fishes: (1) survivorship of newly settled fish will be enhanced on reefs where resident and/or transient piscivorous fish are removed; and (2) these effects on survivorship will vary with the magnitude of recruitment. These will be tested by controlled experimental manipulations of predatory fish on isolated patch reefs at two sites: Lee Stocking Island in the Bahamas, and St. Thomas in the U. S. Virgin Islands.