Functional Diversity of the Fish Community Associated to Soft-Bottoms in the Lagoon of La Paz B.C.S., México

Document pages: 12 pages

Abstract: There has been an increase of communitystudies that incorporate the use of functional diversity indices. Theincorporation of these indices in the analysis of marine communities isrecent, however, could contribute with relevant information about the health ofthose communities. The lagoon of La Paz is a body of water located in La Paz,B.C.S., México. Despite its regional importance, there are not recent studiesabout its fish communities. Therefore, the aim of the present study was toanalyze the temporal and spatial structure of the functional diversity of fishcommunities associated to soft bottoms, from August 2016 to July 2017, as wellas important environmental variables. Functional diversity indices showed significantdifferences between months. Spatial analysis did not show significantdifferences perhaps due to low variability of the type of substrate.Temperature showed temporal differences as well. Therefore, temperature may bea limiting environmental variable for many fish species inhabiting coastallagoons.