Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Synthesis Center, Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60605, USA.
BMC Ecol. 2012 Aug 1;12:15. doi: 10.1186/1472-6785-12-15.
The effective management and conservation of biodiversity is predicated on clearly defined conservation targets. Species number is frequently used as a metric for conservation prioritization and monitoring changes in ecosystem health. We conducted a series of synoptic surveys focusing on the fishes of the Bootless Bay region of Papua New Guinea to generate a checklist of fishes of the region. Bootless Bay lies directly south of Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, and experiences the highest human population density of any marine area in the country. Our checklist will set a baseline against which future environmental changes can be tracked.
We generated a checklist of 488 fish species in 72 families found in Bootless Bay during a two-week sampling effort. Using incident-based methods of species estimation, we extrapolate there to be approximately 940 fish species in Bootless Bay, one of the lowest reported numbers in Papua New Guinea.
Our data suggest that the Bootless Bay ecosystem of Papua New Guinea, while diverse in absolute terms, has lower fish biodiversity compared to other shallow marine areas within the country. These differences in faunal diversity are most likely a combination of unequal sampling effort as well as biophysical factors within Bootless Bay compounded by historical and/or contemporary anthropogenic disturbances.
有效的生物多样性管理和保护取决于明确界定的保护目标。物种数量常被用作保护优先级和监测生态系统健康变化的指标。我们进行了一系列综合调查，重点研究巴布亚新几内亚无足湾地区的鱼类，以生成该地区鱼类的清单。无足湾位于巴布亚新几内亚首都莫尔斯比港的正南方，是该国人口密度最高的海洋区域。我们的清单将为未来的环境变化提供一个基准。
在为期两周的抽样工作中，我们在无足湾生成了一份包含 72 个科的 488 种鱼类清单。使用基于事件的物种估计方法，我们推断无足湾大约有 940 种鱼类，这是巴布亚新几内亚报告的最低数字之一。
我们的数据表明，与该国其他浅海地区相比，巴布亚新几内亚的无足湾生态系统虽然在绝对意义上是多样化的，但鱼类生物多样性较低。这些动物群多样性的差异很可能是由于无足湾内部历史和/或当代人为干扰的不平衡抽样工作以及生物物理因素的综合作用。
