Synopsis
The fishes associated with coral reefs offer excellent opportunities for the study of the factors that determine the species composition of complex, highly interactive communities. Amenable to sampling and direct observations many patch reefs are small enough to be studied as entire units and yet diverse enough to include a wide range of interactions.
Coral reef fishes appear to be highly specialized in morphology, color, behavior and life cycles and yet colonization experiments and repeated censusing have shown a surprisingly high variation in the fishes that are associated in similar habitats or in the same habitat at different times. This has led to two different views: (i) the chaos view that holds that the species composition is due to random factors and chance colonization, and (ii) the order view that resource sharing adaptations determine which species can live together.
This paper reviews some of the obvious adaptations of reef fishes. An examination of the maximum sizes reached by infaunal reef dwellers shows that the largest individual of each species differs by a constant proportion from the next larger and next smaller species. This suggests growth limitations by interspecies competition. A hypothetical model showing how this might work is offered and it is shown that as long as there are more species than can be accommodated in the community at any one time the number of combinations is great enough to give the appearance of randomness even though the individual species may have precise environmental requirements.
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This paper forms part of the proceedings of a mini-symposium convened at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., 18–19 May 1976, entitled ‘Patterns of Community Structure in Fishes’ (G. S. Hellman, ed.).
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Smith, C.L. Coral reef fish communities: a compromise view. Environ Biol Fish 3, 109–128 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00006312
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00006312