Fish and coral communities shape elasmobranch reef use in southern Mozambique.

ABSTRACT: Few studies have explored whether a reef's bioecological structure affects the presence of elasmobranchs. To examine if the structure of a reef's fish and coral community influences the likelihood of observing certain elasmobranch species, we deployed a remote underwater video station (RUVS) on four reefs in southern Mozambique. A single RUVS was deployed monthly on each reef for 12 months, resulting in 48 deployments and 140 h of video recordings. Images were extracted from the video recordings to estimate the relative abundance of teleost fish and following each camera deployment a 30 m² belt transect was completed to measure the percentage cover of corals. Coral and fish abundances were then separated into common functional metrics describing each community. NMDS and PERMANOV

SUBMITTER: Murie CJG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12820113 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature