Reef Life Survey data (fish and mobile invertebrate counts) from Carrie Bow Cay, Belize, 2015-2019

Aim
Conservation efforts have traditionally addressed the threat of biodiversity loss by prioritizing regions and habitats with high endemic species richness. However, species-poor habitats often harbor distinct, valuable, and/or functionally unique species that contribute to regional diversity. In the tropical marine realm, the “mangrove-seagrass-coral reef continuum” has dominated both the scientific literature and marine spatial planning. Bare sediment habitats are also part of this continuum and often comprise the majority of bottom area, as they do in most regions worldwide, but are understudied and rarely considered in conservation. To address this information gap, we partition the relative contributions of five habitats in the coastal mosaic (forereefs, patch reefs, seagrass, mangroves, and bare sand) to fish diversity across a tropical seascape.
Location
Carrie Bow Cay, Belize Barrier Reef
Methods
Using diver visual censuses, we assessed fish community composition at three repli...