Maintenance of High Diversity in Coral Reef Fish Communities

Abstract

Data have been drawn together to demonstrate that reef fishes by and large are food and habitat generalists with a large amount of overlap in requirements among coexisting species. Suitable living space is the resource most likely to be in short supply for them, and their environment, although benign, is one in which the supply of living space is both spatially and temporally unpredictable. The argument is developed that reef fishes are adapted to this unpredictable supply of space in ways which make interspecific competition for space a lottery in which no species can consistently win. Thus, the high diversity of reef fish communities may be maintained because the unpredictable environment prevents development of an equilibrium community