Journal of Aquaculture Research & Development

Associations of mimic juvenile fish with plant debris: A new purpose on how do juvenile fish use coastal habitats as nurseries

International Conference on Aquaculture & Fisheries

July 20-22, 2015 Brisbane, Australia

Breno Barros

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Aquac Res Development

Abstract:

Juvenile mimic ichthyofauna was surveyed in the mangroves of three locations, in north and north eastern Brazil and in western Colombia using both field observational and comparative geometric morphometrics approaches. Total 668 mimic juvenile individual fishes (16 genera of 11 families) were confirmed to mimic on mangrove plant debris from the three sampling sites and the frequencies of occurrence of mimic juvenile fish were strongly influenced by tidal conditions. Errantic mimic fish were more frequently observed during high and flood tide conditions in the spring tide when large amount of plant debris was present in the water surface in all observed sites. Three distinct groups of mimic juveniles were classified via morphometrics comparative analysis of fish and plant debris, i.e. leafy, seedy and twiggy supported by multivariate statistical analyses (Meta MDS; Bray- Curtis). Our results show a new perspective of how do juvenile fish can make use of mangrove environments in terms of habitat choice, first settlement stages and predator avoidance and discuss the importance of the interaction between such organisms and its surrounding environment under a multi-disciplinary approach, combining behavioral ecology, functional ecology, early ontogeny and geometric morphometrics. These results may also provide important clues for conservation of both mangrove environments and some fish species particularly those that are currently endangered (i.e. Epinephelidae and Serranidae) also discussing evolutionary convergence aspects due to the behavioral similarity shared by the several species.