Demersal Fish Assemblages in Coastal Marine Ecosystems

Demersal fish assemblages occupy the seafloor and the water layer immediately above it along continental shelves, slopes and nearshore habitats. These assemblages comprise a diverse array of species—from flatfish and scorpaenids to benthic elasmobranchs and croakers—that exploit substrate complexity and depth gradients. Their distribution is governed by a combination of abiotic factors (such as bottom temperature, salinity, sediment type and bathymetry) and biotic interactions (notably prey availability, competition and predation). Assemblage structure often exhibits pronounced spatial heterogeneity, with soft‐bottom environments hosting infaunal feeders and mixed sand–gravel areas supporting ambush predators. Temporally, seasonal cycles in temperature and primary productivity drive shifts in abundance and community composition, while longer‐term influences such as climate warming and ocean acidification are already inducing poleward range expansions and local declines. Demersal fishes play a central role in coastal food webs by linking benthic invertebrates to higher trophic levels, mediating nutrient recycling and supporting commercial and artisanal fisheries. Their spatial patterns provide essential benchmarks for ecosystem‐based management, informing the design of marine protected areas and trawl closures. Advances in multivariate statistics, acoustic telemetry, stable isotope ecology and remote sensing have enhanced our ability to resolve fine‐scale associations between demersal communities and habitat features. Integrating these tools offers new insights into resilience under fishing pressure and environmental change, underpinning strategies to conserve biodiversity and sustain the ecosystem services derived from productive coastal seas.

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Demersal Fish Assemblages in Coastal Marine Ecosystems publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in demersal fish assemblages in coastal marine ecosystems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Demersal fish: Species that live and feed on or near the seabed, as opposed to pelagic fish that inhabit the open water column.

Benthic habitat: The ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water, including sediment surfaces and sub‐surface layers.

Beta diversity: A measure of spatial turnover in species composition between habitats or along environmental gradients.

Isotopic niche breadth: An estimate of the range of resources a species exploits, derived from variation in stable isotope ratios (e.g., δ13C and δ15N) in its tissues.

References

1. Trophic ecology and resource partitioning of Haemulidae species along the Northeastern Brazilian continental shelf. Neotropical Ichthyology (2022).
2. Multivariate analysis of the spatial species diversity of demersal fish assemblages in relation to habitat characteristics in a subtropical national park, Taiwan. Marine Biodiversity (2021).