| Summary |
The diets of selected fish from the coral reef ecosystem at Calabash Caye, Belize have been analyzed through stomach content analysis. These diets have been compared to literature values from the West Indies (Randall 1967) using regular equivalence, which gives insight not only into the variation in prey items, but also to the different roles each species occupies in its own ecosystem. The diets from Belize and the West Indies were found to be similar in cases where sufficient samples were taken. Regular equivalence and multi-dimensional scaling have been employed to categorize the food web at Calabash Caye. This method reveals trophic structure and trophic niche of organisms in this community. These diets were then incorporated into an Ecopath model to analyze the flow of energy through the system. Analyses of the Ecopath outputs reveal that primary production is high and that a large percentage of energy in the system moves through short cycles in the lower trophic levels. Comparisons were made between the outputs of this model with that of an Ecopath model of the U.S. Virgin Islands - Puerto Rico reef area. The higher levels of production suggest that Calabash Caye is either more disturbed or at less mature developmental stage than the U.S. Virgin Islands - Puerto Rico reef area. Ultimately, simulations can be applied to the Calabash Caye Ecopath model to predict the changes that take place in the food web as biomass and abundance of fish and invertebrates changes due to fishing pressure, marine protected areas, or natural perturbations. This preliminary Ecopath model is designed to be used by the Belize Fisheries Department for developing management strategies for their marine resources. |
| General note | Presented by the faculty of the Department of Biology. |
| General note | Advisor: Joseph J. Luczkovich |
| General note | Diet comparisons, Diet matrix, Ecopath models and Food web visualizations on supplemental CD-ROM. |
| Dissertation note | M.S. East Carolina University 2006 |
| Bibliography note | Included bibliographical references (leaves 102-109). |
| Genre/form | dissertations. |
| Genre/form | Academic theses. |
| Genre/form | Academic theses. |
| Genre/form | Thèses et écrits académiques. |
