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Patterns of coral community structure of subtropical reefs in the Solitary Islands Marine Reserve, Eastern Australia
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Harriott, Vicki J. Smith, Steven D. Harrison, Peter L. |
| Copyright Year | 1994 |
| Abstract | Although the Solitary Islands Manne Reserve lies at latitude 30" S on the east coast of Austral~a, over 700 km south of the Great Barrier Reef it contains b e n t h ~ c ommunities dominated by extenslve areas of scleractln~an corals A qual~tative survey publ~shed In 1974 reported a total of 34 coral specles in the region and more recent records Include a total of 55 coral species Here, we present the results of the first quantitative ben th~c surveys for 7 s ~ t e s in the Solitary Islands Manne Reserve As a result of these surveys an additIona135 specles of scleractin~an coral have been recorded from the region bnnging the total to 90 coral specles In 28 genera from l 1 families However 21 of the 55 coral specles previously recorded were not found dunng this study These results indicate that a d y n a m ~ c temporal pattern oi specles recultment and replacement is occurnng within these subtropical coral conununities Scleractinian coral cover ranged from a low of 8 5% at Muttonbird Island the reef closest to the coastline to 50 9 % at SW Sol~tary Island These values are wth in the range of coral cover reported for troplcal fnnging reefs M u l t ~ d ~ m e n s ~ o n a l s ca l~ng (MDS) analysis indicated 4 malor slte groupings the 2 sites closest to shore the most northern offshore slte, which was different from all other sltes South Solltary Island and the other 3 island s ~ t e s which showed some similarity to one another The major differences among sltes were higher coral species nchness and the relative Importance of Acropora specles on the more northern and offshore reefs, and higher abundance of large macroalgae close to the coastline The Solitary Islands coral rommunlties contain a unlque assoclation of tropical species neal their southern lat~tudlnal range, and subtropical scleractinian species which are rare or absent from the Great Barner Reef r e q o n Although coral cover 1s high at the Solitary Islands, these high-lat~tude sltes are less dlverse than trop~cal f n n g ~ n g reefs, with respect to both total number of coral species and the number of species per sampllng unlt Furthermore, the pnmary substratum is formed by rock rather than lunestone so the extenslve coral communit~es fall to form coral reefs at this latitude |
| Starting Page | 67 |
| Ending Page | 76 |
| Page Count | 10 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.3354/meps109067 |
| Volume Number | 109 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.int-res.com/articles/meps/109/m109p067.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.3354/meps109067 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
