Do cold water corals provide an essential habitat for Helicolenus dactylopterus (Delaroche, 1809) in the Northwest Africa?

Autor: El Vadhel H; Institut Mauritanien de Recherches Océanographiques et des Pêches (IMROP), Nouadhibou, Mauritania; Univ. Brest, CNRS, IRD, Ifremer, Laboratoire des Sciences de L'Environnement Marin (LEMAR) UMR 6539, Plouzané, France., Buhl-Mortensen L; Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway. Electronic address: lenebu@hi.no., Babou DA; Institut Mauritanien de Recherches Océanographiques et des Pêches (IMROP), Nouadhibou, Mauritania., Dridi A; Institut National de Recherche Halieutique (INRH), Agadir, Morocco., Balde BS; Centre de Recherches Océanographiques de Dakar Thiaroye (CRODT), Pole de Recherches ISRA de HANN (ISRA), Senegal., Bouzouma MEM; Institut Mauritanien de Recherches Océanographiques et des Pêches (IMROP), Nouadhibou, Mauritania., Psomadakis PN; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Viale Delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153, Rome, Italy; South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, Private Bag 1015, Makhanda, 6140, South Africa.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Marine environmental research [Mar Environ Res] 2024 Jun; Vol. 198, pp. 106538. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 May 09.
DOI: 10.1016/j.marenvres.2024.106538
Abstrakt: Cold water corals (CWC) provide habitats for many organisms including demersal fish. Bottom trawl observations have indicated a co-occurrence of the fish Helicolenus dactylopterus with CWC reefs, but a detailed understanding of this relation is lacking. To better understand the nature of this relation we have analyzed 85 video-lines from ROV dives conducted at 25-1700 m depth off Morocco, Mauritania, and Senegal in 2020 and 2021. We annotated abundance, size, and behavior of the 552 specimens observed (32% juveniles and 68% adults), of these 82% occurred in CWC habitats at 400-600 m depth. Both juveniles and adults were observed standing on the seafloor. Our observations are discussed considering available knowledge on feeding ecology and life cycle of H. dactylopterus. Our findings show that CWC provides an essential habitat for this species at least during parts of its lifecycle, however, more behavioral studies are needed for an in-depth understanding of this association.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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