9503305 Schmitt The aim of the work is to understand the dynamics and regulation of structured, open populations, which typify most marine reef fishes and invertebrates. While there is broad agreement among ecologists that attributes of populations are shared by more than an single process (e.g., availability of propagules, competition within and between life stages, competition with other species, predation), there remains considerable disagreement regarding their relative importance. There also is some confusion about what roles various processes have in producing dynamics; few empirical workers have distinguished between processes that regulate populations (i.e., bound fluctuations) as opposed to those that cause variation around the mean abundance. An enormous amount is known about the caused of fluctuations in abundance of reef organisms, but very little is known about what regulates their populations. This work will contribute in several key ways to understanding the general issue of dynamics and regulation. It is one of the first comprehensive, pluralistic evaluations of reef fishes that will distinguish effects of processes on regulation and on variation. Second, it will use for the first time operational definitions and analytical protocols for quantitative assessments of the relative importance of various processes. As such, the research could yield standard approaches and procedures to address relative importance. Third, the application of infrared video technology enables the exploration of little studied but crucial processes of settlement and early mortality.
