A comparative study of morphospace occupation of mesopelagic fish assemblages from the Canary Islands (North-eastern Atlantic)

Abstract

The morphology of fishes plays a very important role in the ecosystem biodiversity to show different evolutionary strategies. The morphological variations among species can be graphically represented in a morphospace and analysed using different methods. In this study we used different assemblages of mesopelagic fishes living in the Canary Islands (North-eastern Atlantic) to compare two methods: convex hull and patterning. The results demonstrated that the patterning of morphospace allowed understanding better the specific ecological strategies and structure of fish assemblages. By contrast, the convex hull is focused on a reduced number of species with a high level of morphological diversity which is located in the periphery of the morphospace. The study demonstrates that patterning analysis is a better tool for comparing these assemblages than convex hull, and it highlights the relevance of the distribution of points within the morphospace for characterizing fish assemblages