Relative importance of habitat mosaics for fish guilds in the northeastern coast of Brazil

Abstract

The identification of patterns in habitat use by fish guilds may provide an integrated perspective of coastal mosaics. Thus, we used multivariate analyses to assess the relative importance of habitat types for fish guilds based on density and species composition throughout a seasonal event in the northeastern coast of Brazil. Our results showed a great variability of responses found for each functional group, with species composition of guilds that are estuarine-related being affected by habitat types (p=0.001) and seasons (p=0.008), whereas the facultative estuarine users showed no significant relationship with both variables (p=0.95). Specific habitat association patterns were not found for guilds, though solely estuarine species (p=0.041) and marine straggler fishes (p=0.027) were related to environmental conditions that varied greatly with seasonality (i.e., rainfall and salinity rates), indicating that temporal changes in the region allow species from different guilds to explore the whole coastal mosaic at different scales of space and time. For this reason, we highlight that the integrated protection of beaches, mangroves and seagrass compose an imperative strategy to sustain the complexity of inshore coastal areas that are highly productive for coastal fisheries and fundamental to maintain coastal livelihoods.