Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
© The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Biology Letters 12 (2016): 20160309, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2016.0309.
Description:
The persistence and resilience of many coral reef species are dependent on rates of connectivity among sub-populations. However, despite increasing research efforts, the spatial scale of larval dispersal remains unpredictable for most marine metapopulations. Here, we assess patterns of larval dispersal in the angelfish Centropyge bicolor in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea, using parentage and sibling reconstruction analyses based on 23 microsatellite DNA loci. We found that, contrary to previous findings in this system, self-recruitment (SR) was virtually absent at both the reef (0.4–0.5% at 0.15 km2) and the lagoon scale (0.6–0.8% at approx. 700 km2). While approximately 25% of the collected juveniles were identified as potential siblings, the majority of sibling pairs were sampled from separate reefs. Integrating our findings with earlier research from the same system suggests that geographical setting and life-history traits alone are not suitable predictors of SR and that high levels of localized recruitment are not universal in coral reef fishes.
Description:
This study was supported by KAUST baseline research funds (to M.L.B.) and a KAUST Special Partnership Collaborative Fellowship (to M.L.B. and P.S.-A.). Additional funding was provided by Australian Research Council funding to G.P.J. and NSF grant nos. OCE0928442 and OCE1031256 to S.R.T.
Keywords:
Larval dispersal
;
Connectivity
;
Parentage
;
Sibship
;
Kimbe Bay
;
Metapopulation
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
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