Fishing and habitat condition differentially affect size spectra slopes of coral reef fishes

Marine food webs are structured through a combination of top-down and bottom-up processes. In coral reef ecosystems, fish size is related to life-history characteristics and size-based indicators can represent the distribution and flow of energy through the food web. Thus, size spectra can be a useful tool for investigating the impacts of both fishing and habitat condition on the health and productivity of coral reef fisheries. In addition, coral reef fisheries are often data-limited and size spectra analysis can be a relatively cost-effective and simple method for assessing fish populations. Abundance size spectra are widely used and quantify the relationship between organism size and relative abundance. Previous studies that have investigated the impacts of fishing and habitat condition together on the size distribution of coral reef fishes, however, have aggregated all fishes regardless of taxonomic identity. This leads to a poor understanding of how fishes with different feeding str...