Fishery-Independent Data Reveal Negative Effect of Human Population Density on Caribbean Predatory Fish Communities

Authors

Christopher D. Stallings, Oregon State UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

Keywords

Population density, Marine fish, Caribbean, Coral reefs, Islands, Latitude, Community structure, Reefs

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0005333

Abstract

Background: Understanding the current status of predatory fish communities, and the effects fishing has on them, is vitally important information for management. However, data are often insufficient at region-wide scales to assess the effects of extraction in coral reef ecosystems of developing nations.

Methodology/Principal Findings: Here, I overcome this difficulty by using a publicly accessible, fisheries-independent database to provide a broad scale, comprehensive analysis of human impacts on predatory reef fish communities across the greater Caribbean region. Specifically, this study analyzed presence and diversity of predatory reef fishes over a gradient of human population density. Across the region, as human population density increases, presence of large-bodied fishes declines, and fish communities become dominated by a few smaller-bodied species.

Conclusions/Significance: Complete disappearance of several large-bodied fishes indicates ecological and local extinctions have occurred in some densely populated areas. These findings fill a fundamentally important gap in our knowledge of the ecosystem effects of artisanal fisheries in developing nations, and provide support for multiple approaches to data collection where they are commonly unavailable.

Was this content written or created while at USF?

Yes

Citation / Publisher Attribution

PLoS ONE, v. 4, issue 5, art. e5333

© 2009 Stallings. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Scholar Commons Citation

Stallings, Christopher D., "Fishery-Independent Data Reveal Negative Effect of Human Population Density on Caribbean Predatory Fish Communities" (2009). Marine Science Faculty Publications. 2283.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/msc_facpub/2283