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Assessment of species diversity and coral cover of Velapertumuni Reef, Palk Bay, India

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Title Assessment of species diversity and coral cover of Velapertumuni Reef, Palk Bay, India
 
Creator Sukumaran, Sandhya
George, Rani Mary
Kasinathan, C
 
Subject Coral Reefs
 
Description Velapertumuni Reef, a fringing reef of Palk Bay was surveyed for the assessment of the coral cover and
biodiversity during September 2004, following the Line Intercept Transect Method and their geographical
positions were fixed using the Global Positioning System. The percentages of live and dead coral cover at
each site were derived and a total of 12 hard coral species were found on the transects; Pontes solida was the
major species at 6 sites, followed by Favia pallida at 2 sites and Acropora cytllerea and Porites lutea were
dominant in 5" and 8" sites respectively. Therefore, except for one site the massive corals were dominant in
all other areas. The total live and dead coral cover for the reef as a whole was estimated as 44% and 26%
respectively and the remaining part was covered with coralline algae, sand and rubble. Dead coral cover was
dominated by poritids, but acroporids showed the highest ratio of dead coral to live coral cover. Further,
relative abundance values were derived for each species and they were assigned status as dorninant/abundant/
common/uncommon/rare. Accordingly, P. solida was the only species in the "dominant "category; I?
lutea and E pallida belonged to the category "abundant" and all other species were given either "common"
or "uncommon" status. The Shannon indices of diversity in most of the sites were low varying from 0-2 and
the reef as a whole showed a diversity of 1.47. The species richness and evenness values also showed low
values of 5.4 and 0.59 respectively.
 
Publisher MBAI
 
Date 2005
 
Type Article
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
Identifier http://eprints.cmfri.org.in/2053/1/Sandhya_139-143.pdf
Sukumaran, Sandhya and George, Rani Mary and Kasinathan, C (2005) Assessment of species diversity and coral cover of Velapertumuni Reef, Palk Bay, India. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of India, 47 (2). pp. 139-143.