Figure 1.
The location of the sixty-five individual BRUVs deployments in the Solitary Islands Marine Park (SIMP), New South Wales, Australia.
The northern sampling site is approximately adjacent to Station Creek, and the southern sampling site is approximately adjacent to Bare Bluff. The insert box (right side of image) displays the full extent of the SIMP in grey, with the complete sampling area indicated within the red box. The second insert box (top of image) shows the study position in relation to Australia.
Table 1.
Factor groups, levels and number of BRUVs replicates sampled.
Figure 2.
Distance-based redundancy analysis biplots representing raw Pearson correlations for habitat variables.
Vectors are overlaid to represent the different environmental variables most important in each modelling approach. Length and direction of vectors indicate the strength and direction of the relationship. Numbers 1–4 within the key indicate backscatter intensity.
Table 2.
Marginal and sequential test results for the distance based linear modelling (DistLM) procedure using forward selection and 4999 permutations, examining four factors of interest within the Adjusted R2 model, and two within the AIC model.
Figure 3.
Distance-based redundancy analysis biplots representing raw Pearson correlations for fish species.
This is as seen in Fig. 2, however here vectors for the 13 most influential fish species in the analysis are overlaid. Length and direction of vectors indicate the strength and direction of the relationship. Numbers 1–4 within the key indicate backscatter intensity.
Table 3.
Family, genus, species, common name, and Pearson correlations of environmental variables with each of the four dbRDA axes, for both the adjusted R2 and AIC models.
Figure 4.
Mean species richness and total MaxN (±SE) at three depths and four different levels of backscatter intensity.
The graph for depth also show differences between northern (black bars) and southern (grey bars) locations within these factors. Data from northern and southern locations has been combined for backscatter intensity due to unbalanced numbers of replicates within the four levels of intensity.
Table 4.
Summary of one-way PERMANOVA results for the analysis of differences in species richness and total MaxN, and for differences in assemblage structure across the different factors.
Table 5.
Results of post-hoc pair-wise contrasts of species richness and total MaxN, and assemblage structure (PERMANOVA) for each pair of levels across the factors.
Figure 5.
Non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (nMDS) ordination showing the relationship among fish assemblages from three depths, three distances from shore, and two locations.
Data were square-root transformed prior to analysis. Lines represent 60% similarity. Numbers 1–4 within the key indicate backscatter intensity.