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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
A monthly census of resident fishes in tide pools was made at 3 sites on the Portuguese
west coast, from 1993 to 1997. A total of 43 tide pools was monitored. Results of manipulation (addition
and removal) experiments are presented. There is a very high level of consistency in the numbers of
species at 1 site. Experiments on removal and addition show that the number of fish in the pools returns
to normal in a few weeks. The inter-annual fluctuations of recruitment are less pronounced as the fish
grow, possibly due to density dependent mortality. At the other 2 sites, where the pools are disturbed
by storms that reshape their contents and move large quantities of sand, there is a less consistent pattern.
The agonistic behaviour of tide pool fishes is strongly related to the priority of access to holes and
crevices and this may place limits on the number of fishes of a given size that can exist in each pool as
a function of topograph~c complexity.
Description
Keywords
Intertidal fishes Resilience Inter-annual variations Fish communities
Citation
Marine Ecology Progress Series, 184, 197-203