Recovery and variation of the coastal fish community following a cold intrusion event in the Penghu Islands, Taiwan.

ABSTRACT: Knowledge of community resilience aids the development of strategies to mitigate the impacts of a disturbance. An extreme low-seawater temperature event in late January and February 2008 resulted in high fish mortality in the coastal waters of the Penghu Islands, Taiwan. In this study, we used underwater diving visual censuses to analyze fish communities at eight sampling stations along the coast of the Penghu Islands for seven years after the 2008 event. We evaluated community metrics, including species richness, abundance-weighted diversity, average thermal affinity, and average trophic level, and described the temporal variation in select dominant species abundances. Species richness and diversity of the communities required 53 months to reach a steady-state at the sampling stations fol

SUBMITTER: Chen H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7518628 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature