engleski

Do fi sh assemblages at sites featuring man-made concrete walls differ from those at natural rocky-reef sites?

The urban development of seashores is predicted to lower biodiversity. After we validated a stationary lureassisted visual-census method, we proceeded to test the overall hypothesis that fish community structure changes when complex and heterogeneous natural rocky habitats are displaced by less complex vertical hard surfaces. Taxonomic fish community descriptors derived from pristine rocky shorelines were compared with those featuring concrete walls and to natural rocky reefs directly neighboring such developments. Fish communities differed very little between sites across the three levels of development and existing differences were not consistent across all sites within a level. We conclude that in the Croatian Adriatic, the typically small-scale concrete-wall developments do not cause major disruptions of natural near-shore fish assemblages.

fi sh community, lure visual census, rocky reefs, seawalls, urbanization, predation intensity

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