Coral cover as a proxy of disturbance: A case study of the biodiversity of the hermatypic corals in Yongxing Island, Xisha Islands in the South China Sea

Abstract

The Yongxing Island is the biggest island of Xisha Islands in the middle part of the South China Sea. It occupies 1.8 square kilometers of land area and has permanent residence on it. There are only a few papers on the coral community of the Xisha Islands, reporting the species composition, structure and zonations of the hermatypic coral community in 1970s. The present study describes the hermatypic coral community based on the quadrat survey after almost 30 years in Yongxing Island in August 2002. It was the first time to present the percent cover data of live corals of Yongxing Island via a systematic scheme of quantitative quadrat sampling. The average total percent cover of the live coral is 68.4%. We found the total percent cover (TPC) could be an idea proxy of the overall disturbance regime impinging on the coral community. TPC can be used as an integrated measure of disturbance to coral reef . Using this surrogate, the best fit relation between TPC of the live corals and species richness, species diversity, or the species evenness is the unimodal second-order polymorphic parabola equation. This result is expected by the intermediate disturbance hypothesis (IDH). From the fitted parabola equations, we calculated the best TPCs corresponding to the maximal species richness, the highest species diversity, or the most evenness respectively. They are surprisingly stabilized between 55% and 58%. Coral cover is the basic parameter widely available for most observation, research or monitoring programs. The good qualitative characteristics of percent cover provide powerful tool for the experimental, theoretical and modeling studies of coral reef in response to the disturbance.