International Coral Reef Symposium Executive Committee
Abstract
Fish fauna inventories (497 spp. in total) from coral reefs (276 spp.), soft bottoms (287 spp.) and mangrove (75 spp.) of Saint-Vincent Bay (New Caledonia) are compared. Each of these habitats present a distinct fish assemblage, coral reefs being characterized by grazers and omnivores, soft bottoms by small carnivores and mangroves by detritus feeders and piscivores. The overlap was most important between coral reefs and soft bottoms (101 spp. in common), #Chaetodontidae, Pomacentridae, Lethrinidae and #Lutjanidae being the main common families. Overlap between soft bottoms and mangrove was of 36 species, essentially #Leiognathidae, Lutjanidae and #Sphyraenidae. There was almost no overlap between coral reefs and mangrove (13 species, 9 being ubiquitous). These results and a literature survey indicate that in the Indo-Pacific they are few interactions between coastal fish communities which may be essentially self sufficient. Died feeding migrations and juvenile migrations would be the main active energy flows, nevertheless, the fluxes seem to be limited. (Résumé d'auteur
