RESEARCH

The Fish Ecology Lab has taken a lead role in reef fish ecology/fisheries research in the West Pacific region.  Essentially our research fits under four main themes:

1. Connectivity of reef fish populations  

2. Efficacy of Guam’s Marine Preserves

3. Demography of coral reef fish

4. Movement Patterns and home range sizes – large reef fish

5. Niche expansion in degraded ecosystems

Collaborations

Lionfish populations in Indo-Pacific

Spawning aggregations and home range size of key target species in Pohnpei

Connectivity of reef fish populations

• Identifying source and sink populations across the Marianas Islands
• Genetic relatedness between cohorts of newly settled individuals
• Relationship between adult reef fish populations and newly settled individuals

Processes behind variable recruitment in coral reef fish

• Large-scale oceanographic processes and larval replenishment
• Local retention vs. long distance dispersal
• Predicting larval transport pathways

Efficacy of Guam’s Marine Preserves

• Assessing functional diversity across varying degrees of protection
• Impacts of destructive fishing practices
• Measuring spillover into adjacent fished areas
• Relative reproductive contribution of Preserves
• Indirect effects of degraded ecosystems

Demography of coral reef fish

• Demographic makeup of reef fish within Marine Preserves
• Post-recruitment growth in newly settled reef fish at varying densities
• Impacts of fishing on age/size at sex-change
• Demographic makeup of exploited spawning aggregations
• Survivorship rates of newly settled fish across sites – is there a genetic basis?

Movement Patterns

• Identify home range size for two species of Naso
• Small and large-scale movement relative to reproductive periods

Patterns of reproduction

• Define sexuality in species that change sex