Short Communication: Intertidal Rock Pool Fishes in the Natural Reserve of Glorieuses Islands (Western Indian Ocean)

Abstract

Abstract-The fish diversity of intertidal rock pools in the Glorieuses Islands was investigated using clove-oil anaesthetic. That method, is easy to use and safety is well adapted for this type of census. A total of thirty two species belonging to 14 families were sampled. Of these, 19 were observed as adults in most stations and represented the typical population of these intertidal pools, in particular the Blenniidae that presented the highest species richness and the Gobiidae, which were the most abundant. The 13 remaining species were only observed during their juvenile state and appeared to be only temporary residents. More than half of the species collected (17/32 spp) were not recorded during the previous ichthyofauna study at the Glorieuses islands using UVC, results that show the importance of the anaesthetic method that allows the collection of smaller-sized species that live inside the reef framework and are consequently more difficult to record.

Intertidal fishes of Mauritius with special reference to shallow tidepools

“…For these reasons, the results by Durville and Chabanet (2009) are comparable with those in our pools. Several taxa, listed as permanent or temporary residents by Durville and Chabanet (2009), were confirmed in Mauritian pools, either by USNM material (collected by Heemstra and co-workers in the year 1995) or through the present study, for example, the temporary residents Kuhlia mugil , Chaetodon lunula , Stethojulis albovittata , Thalassoma purpureum , Acanthurus triostegus , Chrysiptera biocellata , Chrysiptera glauca , three species of Abudefduf and the permanent residents Istiblennius dussumieri and I. edentulus . In contrast to the situation in Mauritian pools, Durville and Chabanet (2009) found juveniles and adults of the moray eel Gymnothorax pictus and several adults of the eel blenny Haliophis guttatus in their small pools.…”

“…In the present field study, the total number of permanent intertidal residents was low compared with the results of the field trip by Heemstra and co-workers in the year 1995 (in Fricke 1999), Durville and Chabanet (2009) or Sindorf et al (2015). This low number of residents could be due to the low depth and small size of most of the examined pools.…”

“…Besides the present study, a few further publications specifically dealing with intertidal fishes in the Western Indian Ocean do exist. Durville and Chabanet (2009) found a total of 32 different fish species in intertidal rockpools on the Glorieuses Islands. They denominated 19 of these species as 'typical population' also occurring during the adult stage in these habitats, whereas the remaining 13 species were observed during their juvenile stage only.…”

“…In order to get a complete list of intertidal fish species in Mauritius, all available literature was searched, extracting data on fishes recorded from intertidal habitats and their localities. Besides the published records from Mauritius (Fricke 1999), data from Réunion (Fricke et al 2009), Europa Island (Fricke et al 2013), Glorieuses Islands (Durville and Chabanet 2009) and several further places were also considered for those species that are known from Mauritius but for which published intertidal records from Mauritius were lacking so far. Additionally, material from the following museum collections was included: USNM, Smithsonian Collection, Washington (records by P.C.…”

“…The assignment to one of these categories was established on the basis of literature references such as Murase (2013) and Sindorf et al (2015), our own observations and information about size as well as developmental stage of the examined fishes in different studies, such as Ntiba et al (1993), Durville and Chabanet (2009), Ghanbarifardi and Malek (2009) and González-Murcia et al (2016). It is worth mentioning that there are no generally used abbreviations of the aforementioned categories in the existing literature, for example, PR means partial resident in Cox et al (2011), but permanent resident in Sindorf et al (2015).…”