Fish diversity of mangrove ecosystems in Sultanate of Oman

Abstract

Mangroves in the Omani waters form one of the major marine ecosystems in this part of the world, which are considered the home for diverse and economically important fish groupings. A scarcity of information exists concerning mangrove fish communities of Oman. In the present study, a documentation for the ichthyofauna of several chosen mangrove localities in Oman is given. Species abundance distribution curves were constructed and compared among studies. Overall, 177 fish species associated to Omani mangroves were identified. Among these there were 14 Chondrichthian species belonging to 5 families and 163 teleostean fish species included in 44 families. Fifteen fish families accounted for 80% or more of the relative abundance of all studies. In spite of the use of different fishing methods, common features arose for most of the mangrove fish assemblages. Perciformes was found to be the most dominant order, with 15, 34, 63 families, genera and species respectively. The remaining 20 orders showed having 1-3 families, 1-13 genera and 1-4 species. Blenniidae was the dominant family through the localities examined, with 10 genera and 19 species. Three community indices viz. Shannon-Weaver diversity index (H '), the evenness rate (J) and Jaccard similarity coefficient were applied to demonstrate species diversity of fish species in sampling areas and evenness to show similarities between localities examined. The result showed that the diversity of fishes in the eleven mangrove localities studied is high compared with the previous studies.