Data from: Quantifying the human impacts on Papua New Guinea reef fish communities across space and time

Describing the drivers of species loss and of community change are important goals in both conservation and ecology. However, it is difficult to determine whether exploited species decline due to direct effects of harvesting or due to other environmental perturbations brought about by proximity to human populations. Here we quantify differences in species richness of coral reef fish communities along a human population gradient in Papua New Guinea to understand the relative impacts of fishing and environmental perturbation. Using data from published species lists we categorize the reef fishes as either fished or non-fished based on their body size and reports from the published literature. Species diversity for both fished and non-fished groups decreases as the size of the local human population increases, and this relationship is stronger in species that are fished. Additionally, comparison of modern and museum collections show that modern reef communities have proportionally fewer fished species relative to 19th century ones. Together these findings show that the reef fish communities of Papua New Guinea experience multiple anthropogenic stressors and that even at low human population levels targeted species experience population declines across both time and space.

阐明物种丧失与群落变化的驱动机制，是保护生物学与生态学领域的核心研究目标之一。然而，学界始终难以区分：受开发利用的鱼类种群衰退，究竟是捕捞活动的直接影响所致，还是因邻近人类聚居区而引发的其他环境扰动所导致。本研究以巴布亚新几内亚（Papua New Guinea）沿岸的珊瑚礁鱼类群落为研究对象，沿人类人口梯度量化其物种丰富度差异，以解析捕捞与环境扰动的相对影响强度。研究团队基于已发表的物种名录数据，结合鱼类体型大小与已发表文献的捕捞记录，将珊瑚礁鱼类划分为捕捞类与非捕捞类两大组别。分析结果显示，随着当地人类人口规模的增长，捕捞类与非捕捞类鱼类的物种多样性均呈下降趋势，且该关联在捕捞类物种中表现得更为显著。此外，通过对比现代与博物馆馆藏标本的群落组成，研究发现相较于19世纪的珊瑚礁群落，现代群落中捕捞类物种的占比显著降低。综合以上研究结果可见，巴布亚新几内亚的珊瑚礁鱼类群落正面临多重人为胁迫因子；且即便在人类人口水平较低的区域，目标捕捞物种的种群数量仍在时空维度上均出现了衰退。