Multilevel decomposition of spatial and environmental effects on nearshore fish assemblages in tropical semi-enclosed ecosystems

We investigated the effects of local- and landscape-scale environmental variables and spatial structure at three hierarchical levels (i.e. type of system, individual systems, and zones within each system) on the fish species composition and abundance in bays and coastal lagoons in southeastern Brazil. The effects were assessed at the assemblage level, and between and within habitat use groups. Exclusive and shared effects of environmental, hierarchical, and spatial variable sets were quantified by variation partitioning, and individual environmental effects were assessed by partial canonical correspondence analyses. The hierarchical and spatial structures were more relevant for habitat use groups less widespread due to the lower dependence on estuarine areas, and influenced primarily the landscape-scale environmental differences between individual systems. At the assemblage level, the exclusively environmental effects were primarily indicative of the marine (e.g., higher depth, pH, and transparency) versus continental (e.g., greater distance from the ocean and mangrove cover) influence. Estuarine, marine migrant, and marine straggler species were more widespread across these gradients, but the former species were primarily associated with greater mangrove cover and the marine stragglers with a higher marine influence. Semi-diadromous and freshwater species were less associated with greater mangrove cover and primarily restricted to coastal lagoons. The different multi-scale environmental effects within each group reinforced the relevance of intra- and inter-specific differences in environmental tolerances and requirements, and evidenced the relevance of the connectivity between alternative habitats in maintaining the structure of fish assemblages. Disentangling multilevel spatial and environmental effects, this study evidenced the critical roles of the maintenance of the environmental heterogeneity in nearby estuarine habitats for nearshore fish assemblages in different types of tropical semi-enclosed estuarine ecosystems. •Hierarchical, spatial, and environmental effects were detected for coastal fish.•Assemblage variation was strongly related to the hierarchical or spatial structure.•Landscape-scale environmental effects explained most of the assemblage variation.•Species more dependent on estuaries were related to wider environmental gradients.•Marine or continental effects were prevalent for less estuarine-dependent species.