Linking fish and prawns to their environment in shallow water marine landscapes

TL;DRAbstract

Studies of highly mobile marine animals, such as fish and decapod crustaceans have been rarely undertaken at scales appropriate to the way the animals use their environment. A major limitation of many studies is that they have focused on: 1) a single scale for animals that respond to their environment at multiple scales; or 2) a single habitat type for animals that use multiple habitat types. As a result, very little is known about the multi-scale environmental variables that influence animal distribution, abundance and assemblage composition, including the structure of the marine landscape mosaic. This study utilises landscape ecology concepts and methods to address these limitations. The outcomes of the study indicate that, for some species found using mangroves at high tide, the composition of substratum adjacent to the mangroves was relatively more important than the composition and spatial arrangement of plants and sediments within the mangroves. At the assemblage level, density a

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