Fauna Associated with the Coral Pocillopora damicornis at the Southern Limit of its Distribution in Western Australia

Abstract

In a study of the fauna of Pocillopora damicornis from three sites at two temperate latitudes on the Western Australia coast, we collected ninetyfour species of coral symbionts, including fifty-four species of decapod crustaceans. Nine of these species are known to be obligate symbionts of living pocilloporid corals throughout the Indo-West Pacific region. At least four other species are known to be non-specifically dependent on living coral with a similarly widespread distribution. Of the remaining eighty-one species, four are known only from living and dead coral, sixty are known from a variety of reef habitats and only facultatively associated with coral, and seventeen have undescribed habits. Although regional species diversity, estimated by species richness, at these two temperate latitudes was less than that reported for some tropical sites, we could find no consistent trend of decreasing diversity with increasing latitude particularly when sample size and size of region were taken into account. More significantly, there was no consistent difference in local species diversity as measured by number of species per unit coral volume between temperate and tropical sites. We conclude that the diversity of the fauna associated with P. damicornis depends as much on the specific characteristics of the site as on latitudinal position.