Analysis of reef fish community structure of Atlantic Ocean

• Grant number: 13/10635-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: August 01, 2013
• End date: January 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Thomas Michael Lewinsohn
• Grantee: Nayara Fernanda Hachich
• Supervisor: Michael Bonsall
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Oxford, England
• Associated to the scholarship: 11/15086-2 - Reef fish communities: phylogenetic patterns and their ecological and evolutionary components, BP.MS

Abstract

Communities assemblage may be influenced by ecological or evolutionary processes or stochastic events. In order to detect the relative contribution of each of these processes on the structure of Atlantic reef fish communities, the master project (2011/15086-2), to which this proposal is linked, focuses on investigating the species' distribution patterns regarding its phylogenetic relatedness, ecological similarity, environment factors and spatial distance between communities. To achieve that, the extended RLQ ordination analysis is quite appropriated. This methodology was developed by the Mathematical Ecology Research Group of Oxford University, headed by Dr. Michael Bonsall (Department of Zoology). Nevertheless, its application is more complex than the procedures described at the master project. While in Oxford I will be working under the supervision of Dr. Bonsall to apply the extended RLQ ordination analysis, adapting it to the reef fish community data in order to analyse the dataset already arranged for my thesis. (AU)