Fish responses to manipulated microhabitat complexity in urbanised shorelines

The diversity-habitat complexity relationship has been utilised widely in conservation and biodiversity enhancement interventions, but few studies have attempted to tease apart the components of complexity that drive this relationship. The ecological engineering of seawalls is one area where this topic has advanced, albeit not at scales relevant to fish. We constructed habitat enhancement units (Simple, Complex, and Freestyle ‘fish houses’) out of hollow concrete blocks and installed them at the base of tropical rip-rap seawalls. Both the Simple and Complex fish houses were cuboid, had the same surface area and volume, and included 100 holes (microhabitats). The holes in Simple fish houses were all the same size, whereas 25 size variations were used in the Complex design (volume-independent manipulation of a single complexity element). The Freestyle fish house was non-cuboid and had more overall volume, microhabitat types and sizes. We examined the volume-independent (Simple vs Complex ..., , , # Data from: Fish responses to manipulated microhabitat complexity in urbanised shorelines

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This dataset is associated to the published paper \"Fish responses to manipulated microhabitat complexity in urbanised shorelines\". The study tested whether manupulated microhabtat complexity influences fish diversity and assemblage composition at two spatial scales (microhabitat and whole-structure scales) and across diel cycles as well as diurnal and nocturnal fish-microhabitat size relationships.

## Experimental setup and sampling protocols

We constructed four replicates of three habitat enhancement units called 'fish houses' with varying degrees of habitat complexitry (Simple, Complex, and Freestyle), made of concrete blocks and installed them at the base of rip-rap seawalls in October 2019. Both the Simple and Complex fish houses were cuboid, had the same surface area and volume, and included 100 holes (microhabitats)....