[Coral-List] Habitat complexity and fishes settlement

[Adrien Cheminee]

Hello everybody,
Within my PhD, along the coast of NW Mediterranean, I am planning an experiment to test the effect of habitat complexity (e.g. macroalgae canopy structure) on settlement of fish juveniles. More precisely, I wish to follow the settlement of fish post-larvae within different types of habitat. I will use  artificial habitat, e.g. small units (few meters square) of artificial algal mimics. The idea is to test the effect of algal densities and patch size on the density of post-larvae settling inside (pelagic larval dispersion species). I am looking for references of studies that would have been investigating such patterns, and I guess this has been done in coral reef environment, for example studies of fishes settlement over coral heads or patches of varying structural complexity. I am more precisely interested in understanding methods that were used : visual census of post-settlers / sampling / captures  etc... I would apreciate if any of you could give me
 some references or papers on related topics.
Many thanks,
Best regards,

Adrien Cheminée

Doctorant en écologie marine - Marine ecology PhD Student
Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis (France)
Portable France : +33 6 81 73 95 19
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