Distribution and relative abundance of flyingfish (Exocoetidae) in the eastern Caribbean. III. Juveniles

Abstract

We investigated the distribution and abundance of juvenile flyingfish in the eastern Caribbean by mghtlighting and dipnetting at 20 stations from April 10 to May 6, 1988. Of the 2211 fish collected, 73.5 % were flym@sh. Abundance of juvenile flying-fish varied significantly across the survey area, but was not correlated with any of the surface water characteristics measured (salinity, temperature, PO4-P, NO3-NO2-N), nor with flotsam abundance or moon phase. Parexocoetus brachypterus (49.5 %), Exocoetus volitans (41.0%) and Hirundichthys affuns (8.0%) accounted for 98.5 % of the flyingfish catch. The length-frequency distribution of P. brachypterus was trimodal, the largest size group being adult. The length-frequency distributions of E. volitans and H. affinis were bimodal. In both cases, the largest size group was adult, but adults of E. volitans were rare, accounting for < 3 % of the E. volitans catch. Abundance of all size groups of all 3 species varied significantly across the survey area, and different life history stages within a species had different geographical distributions. For example, adults of E. vohtans were virtually absent from the survey area, but larvae and juveniles were common. Variation in abundance of juveniles and adults of H. affinis was not correlated across the survey area, and the same was true for small juveniles and adults of P. brachypterus. The integrity of sizespecific geographical distributions is supported by the fact that different survey methods typically detected the same geographical distributions for similar life history stages. Abundance of P. brachypterus larvae in neuston tows was correlated with abundance of the smaller juvenile size group of P. brachypterus sampled by nightlighting. Abundance of E. volitans larvae in neuston tows was correlated with abundance of E. volitans juveniles taken by nightlighting, and abundance of H. affinis adults detected by visual survey was correlated with their abundance in mghtlightmg samples.

Detecting lunar cycles in marine ecology: periodic regression versus categorical ANOVA

“…Most authors define 4 lunar phases, but this ranges from 2 (Grau et al 1981) to 25 (Coblentz 1995. Examples of continuous treatments of lunar cycles are less common, but include Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness-of-fit (Rudloe 1985), Spearman's rank correlation (Oxenford et al 1995), time-series analysis (Robertson et al 1990), generalized additive models (Bigelow et al 1999), and the Rayleigh test for uniform angular distribution (Robertson et al 1990). Finally, there are a large number of papers that forego statistical analysis and use simple graphical representations to demonstrate lunar periodicity (Dufour et al 1996).…”

Literature Review of Flying Fish: Biology, Distribution, Flying Fish Fisheries, and Current Research

“…Flying fish (Exocoetidae) is a small pelagic fish that lives in tropical and subtropical waters (Oxenford et al 1995;Parin 2002;Saveliev et al 2014). These fish are important components in the food chain, where they are prey for large pelagic fish such as marlin, tuna, skipjack and dolphins (Araujo dan Chellappa 2002;Huang and Ou 2012;Oxenford and Hunte 1999).…”