Reproductive Behaviours and Potentially Associated Sounds of the Mottled Grouper Mycteroperca rubra: Implications for Conservation

Most grouper species worldwide are threatened by overfishing. Effective marine protected areas (MPAs) are known to enable population recovery, and consideration of vulnerable species’ reproductive behaviours is fundamental to monitoring and management plans. Many groupers produce sounds associated with reproductive behaviours. Recording these sounds helps to locate spawning sites and improve management efforts to ensure reproduction and viability. This study focuses on a poorly studied yet likely vulnerable grouper species, Mycteroperca rubra, providing novel insights into its reproductive biology by combining underwater visual census surveys, direct visual observations and passive acoustic monitoring within a Mediterranean MPA during two consecutive summers (2017 and 2018). Results indicate that M. rubra individuals were more abundant and larger at one of the protected study sites, where they also occasionally formed unusual aggregations (