Hi Anwar,

I am not sure what exactly you mean when you say “coral associated” fish species. While St. Martin’s Island is clearly not a coral reef island it is surrounded by a diverse coral community that supports a diverse “coral reef fish” community that contains the three key “reef” fish taxa associated with all coral reef habitats, namely the chaetodontids (i.e., Chaetodontidae and Pomacanthidae), the labroids (i.e., Scaridae, Labridae and Pomacentridae) and the acanthurids (i.e., Acanthuridae and Siganidae). The one acanthurid family that I did not find on St. Martins Island was Zanclidae, but since 1997 there may have been more studies done and you may have them in your species list. Majority of species in the tree groups of fish just mentioned have an obligate association with “coral reef biota” and thus by extension also to corals.

Of these 3 groups the most closely associated with corals are the butterflyfishes (Chaetodontidae) with majority of them being corallivorous to various degrees ranging from obligate coral feeders to facultative feeders. In fact, about 50% of chaetodontid fishes feed or corals themselves thus they are coral associated. In our 1997 study we observed only 5 species of butterflyfish. Incidentally, in the 1997 report in Table 14 the name of Chaetodon collare was misspelled (i.e., Chaetodon collarV). Nonetheless, all 5 species are well-known corallivores, and thus are exclusively associate with corals, they are obligate coral feeders. I am not sure what other species you have in your new list but it would be interesting to publish it. You can find the 1997 report through this link:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304077895_MANAGEMENT_PLAN_FOR_CORAL_RESOURCES_OF_NARIKEL_JINJIRA_St_Martin's_Island

If you are interested to get more information on reef fish I strongly recommend a copy of the following textbook that you will find very informative (there is a new edition out there as well):

Sale, P.F. (Ed.) 1991. The Ecology of Fishes on Coral Reefs. Academic Press, INC. San Diego 754 pp.

I have also attached a review paper by Coles et al 2008 on butterflyfish that you should find helpful. I hope this helps you a bit.

Cheers,

Tomas

Dear Tom,

I am very delighted that you replied and gave your suggestions.

Most of the work on the SMI was done by you at that time. There are some publications which just used your data there. There was this article which cited your paper mostly mentioned that there are 98 fish species which are coral associated.

Last year, I found an abstract where the authors confirmed new record of 26 coral associated fish species, and in another paper one more species. These make the total number of fish species found in the SMI 261 (Included 234 species you found).

As there is a possibility that I might have missed other articles, and also I have not studied fisheries, I thought it would be better to ask about the total number here in this platform, and get some expert opinion from those who are studying fish in Bangladesh.

Thanks for the links you shared. I didn't have the other two apart from your one.

Best

Anwar

Hi Anwar,

I am happy to help. Is it possible for you to upload those papers and the species list on your Researchgate link?

Cheers,

Tomas

Dear Tomas,

I have attached the files here. Please have a look. Sorry for the bad quality of the photos.

Best,

Anwar