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Local sonic activity reveals potential partitioning in a coral reef fish community

  • Behavioral ecology–original research
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Abstract

How vocal organisms share acoustic space has primarily received attention in terrestrial environments. Comparable studies in marine environments, however, remain rare. By recording sounds on a coral reef in French Polynesia for 48 h and 24 h, this study provides first insights on how different sound types are distributed within the acoustic space and may create acoustic niches optimizing acoustic communication within a highly diverse community containing numerous soniferous fish species. Day-time was dominated by two to six sound types, while recordings performed at night revealed a more diverse vocal community made of up to nineteen sound types. Calling activity was distributed over time allowing each sound type to dominate the soundscape sequentially. Additionally, differences in the acoustic features of sounds occurring during the same period were observed. Such partitioning in time and acoustic spaces would reduce potential overlaps of sounds produced by vocal species living in sympatry in coral reefs.

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Acknowledgements

We thank CRIOBE staff for the help in the positioning of the recorder. We would also like to thank Stuart Sandin and four anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions on previous versions of this manuscript.

Funding

This work was funded by different research grants: Total Foundation, Contrat de Projet Etat-Polynésie française 2015–2020, PSL project Pesticor, PSL project Ecora, Agence de l’eau-Rhone Méditerranée Corse—no 2018 1765 and LabEx Corail project EMuL.

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Author notes

  1. David Lecchini and Eric Parmentier equal last authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. PSL University, EPHE-UPVD-CNRS, USR 3278 CRIOBE, Moorea, French Polynesia

    Frédéric Bertucci, Katy Maratrat, Cécile Berthe, Marc Besson, Franck Lerouvreur & David Lecchini

  2. Laboratoire de Morphologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, FOCUS, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium

    Frédéric Bertucci, Xavier Raick & Eric Parmentier

  3. Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Ana Sofia Guerra

  4. Laboratoire d’Excellence “CORAIL”, Paris, France

    David Lecchini

Authors
  1. Frédéric Bertucci
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  4. Marc Besson
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  5. Ana Sofia Guerra
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  7. Franck Lerouvreur
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  9. Eric Parmentier
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Contributions

FB, DL and EP designed the study. FB, CB, MB, ASG, XR, and FL collected the data. KM and FB analysed the data. All authors wrote and revised the manuscript. All authors gave final approval for publication.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Frédéric Bertucci.

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All authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

Communicated by Stuart Sandin.

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Bertucci, F., Maratrat, K., Berthe, C. et al. Local sonic activity reveals potential partitioning in a coral reef fish community. Oecologia 193, 125–134 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04647-3

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