Seascape and life-history traits do not predict self-recruitment in a coral reef fish

Marcela Herrera (1) , Gerrit B. Nanninga (2, 1) , Serge Planes (2) , Geoffrey P Jones (3) , Simon R Thorrold (4) , Pablo Saenz-Agudelo (5, 1) , Glenn R Almany (2) , Michael L Berumen (1)

1 RSRC - Red Sea Research Centre
2 CRIOBE - Centre de recherches insulaires et observatoire de l'environnement
3 ARC CEED - ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions
4 WHOI - Biology Department
5 Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales Y Evolutivas

The persistence and resilience of many coral reef species are dependent on rates of connectivity among sub-populations. However, despite increasing research efforts, the spatial scale of larval dispersal remains unpredictable for most marine metapopulations. Here, we assess patterns of larval dispersal in the angelfish Centropyge bicolor in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea, using parentage and sibling reconstruction analyses based on 23 microsatellite DNA loci. We found that, contrary to previous findings in this system, self-recruitment (SR) was virtually absent at both the reef (0.4–0.5% at 0.15 km 2) and the lagoon scale (0.6–0.8% at approx. 700 km 2). While approximately 25% of the collected juveniles were identified as potential siblings, the majority of sibling pairs were sampled from separate reefs. Integrating our findings with earlier research from the same system suggests that geographical setting and life-history traits alone are not suitable predictors of SR and that high levels of localized recruitment are not universal in coral reef fishes.

Mots clés: larval dispersal; connectivity; parentage; sibship; Kimbe Bay; metapopulation

Domaines: Ecologie, Environnement; Zoologie des vertébrés; Biodiversité et Ecologie

Marcela Herrera, Gerrit B. Nanninga, Serge Planes, Geoffrey P Jones, Simon R Thorrold, et al.. Seascape and life-history traits do not predict self-recruitment in a coral reef fish. Biology Letters, 2016, 12 (8), pp.20160309. ⟨10.1098/rsbl.2016.0309⟩. ⟨hal-01358698⟩