Invertivorous reef fishes play a crucial role in coral reef ecosystems, transferring energy from benthic invertebrates to higher trophic levels. They rely on a diverse array of benthic habitats to forage for invertebrate prey. However, climate change and local stressors are reshaping reef habitats, with coral rubble becoming increasingly dominant. Despite low structural complexity, coral rubble supports abundant invertebrates,...

The Saya de Malha Bank (SMB) is one of the largest and least studied marine banks on the Mascarene Plateau. This study aimed to examine the diversity and distribution of the main benthic habitats in the shallow waters of the SMB (23 to 50 m). The survey was carried out in May 2018 during the EAF-Nansen Indian Ocean Research Expedition using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) deployed at 15 stations. Four main benthic habitats w...

The Saya de Malha (SMB) and Nazareth Banks (NB) are the main offshore locations where fishing activities are carried out by the Republic of Mauritius, targeting mainly shallow water Lethrinids, deep-water snappers and groupers. A multi-disciplinary survey was carried out on the two banks in May 2018 on-board the R/V Dr. Fridtjof Nansen with the objective of studying the diversity of fish on both banks using pelagic trawls, bot...

Phylogenetic relationships among the Neotropical cichlid subfamily Geophaginae were examined using 136 morphological characters and a molecular dataset consisting of six mitochondrial and nuclear genes. Topologies produced by morphological and combined data under parsimony were contrasted, congruence among different partitions was analysed, and potential effects of character incongruence and patterns of geophagine evolution on...