Managing top predators: Reef shark fisheries

Video uploaded by oralCoE on 17.12.2011 :

Professor Choats current research is focused on two areas of reef fish biology; feeding in nominally herbivorous fishes and their significance in coral reef ecosystems and the population evolutionary biology of labroid and acanthuroid fishes. The studies on herbivorous reef fishes are being carried out in collaboration with Dr K.D. Clements, University of Auckland and has focused on the resources used by herbivorous fishes and the manner in which they are harvested and processed. The primary goal is to is to evaluate the ecological consequences of different modes of herbivory on coral reefs. The most recent applications of this work include comparative feeding studies in acanthurid fishes linked to a phylogenetic analysis of species relationships using molecular analyses in association with Lynne van Herwerden.

The most interesting aspect of this work is the suggestion that many nominal herbivores among the parrot and surgeon fishes harvest and process very small amount of plant material. This has important implications for reef trophodynamics. (…)