Using GIS to analyze animal behavior in space

Poster Number: 
218
Presenter/Primary Author: 
Tom Adam

This study was conducted as part of a larger effort to look at potential indirect effects of cleaner fish on coral reefs. Cleaners are likely to have indirect effects on the reefs they occupy because they attract and concentrate a wide variety of different client fish to their territories. While client fish visit cleaner stations in order to have ectoparasites removed by the cleaner, they are also involved in other activities (such as feeding) during their visits, and these activities can affect the fish, algae, corals, and other invertebrates that inhabit cleaner stations. Previous work that I have conducted in Moorea has demonstrated that cleaners attract corallivorous butterflyfishes to their territories, and as a result can decrease the growth rate of corals at cleaner stations. Here, I show results from individual behavioral observations of the ornate butterflyfish (Chaetodon ornatissimus) conducted in the Maharepa lagoon on the north shore of Moorea during the 2008 austral summer. The purpose of this poster is two fold: First, to present some of the key results from this study, and second to illustrate how GIS can be used as a tool to investigate questions about animal behavior that have a spatial component. The specific questions that I wanted to address using GIS were: 1) To what extent do individual ornate butterflyfish overuse cleaner stations? 2) What are their feeding rates while visiting cleaner stations and what are they feeding on? 3) Are butterflyfish territories more likely to overlap at cleaner stations than at other locations?

Student Poster: 
Yes