The Influence of the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Fish Populations on the Outcomes of Land-Sea Connectivity

• Published in: Oceanographic Processes of Coral Reefs pp. 165 - 181
• Main Authors: Sheaves, Marcus, Bradley, Michael, Lubitz, Nicolas, Mattone, Carlo, Myers, Jaelen, Venkataraman, Ajay A., Waltham, Nathan J., Winter, Sara
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: CRC Press 2024
• Edition: 2
• ISBN: 103234069X; 9781032340692; 1032340746; 9781032340746
• DOI: 10.1201/9781003320425-13

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region comprises a diversity of ecosystems including the reefs themselves, inter-reefal habitats, and a mosaic of coastal systems. Here, land and sea are strongly interconnected at multiple spatial and temporal scales by diverse patterns of fish movement. This functional interlinking enables a range of vital ecological processes (Sheaves and Johnston 2008; Sheaves 2009). Among the most important contributors to reef function are the mosaics of coastal ecosystems (Figure 1) that are diverse in nature and function; they support vital links between marine environments and nutritionally rich terrestrial ecosystems (Waterhouse et al. 2023). This complex interlinking of land and sea via coastal ecosystems provides the GBR region with its unique ecological character. The interplay of processes ranges from small-scale interactions within the daily life of organisms (Sheaves 2005; Nagelkerken et al. 2015), which are often focused on the scale of an individual habitat, to the large-scale spatiotemporal dynamics (Jones et al. 2010) of fish undergoing major ontogenetic migrations. Together, these interact to influence the outcomes of land-sea connectivity (Sheaves 2009). Understanding the role of fish in land-sea connectivity is central to understanding their importance in the region, both because of the diversity of their linkages (Sheaves et al. 2007a; Nagelkerken et al. 2015) and because of the economic, social, and cultural importance of fish to people of the GBR region (Hutchings et al. 2019).