Combining Passive Acoustics and Environmental Data for Scaling Up Ecosystem Monitoring: A Test on Coral Reef Fishes

Ecological surveys of coral reefs mostly rely on visual data collected by human observers. Although new monitoring tools are emerging, their specific advantages should be identified to optimise simultaneous use. Based the goodness-of-fit linear models, we compared potential passive acoustics and environmental for predicting structure reef fish assemblages in different biogeographic settings. Both types complemented each other. Globally, acoustic showed relatively low added value assemblage structures. The predictions were best distribution abundance among functional entities (i.e., proxies groups, grouping species that share similar eco-morphological traits), simplest combining two when considering diet level water column species. Our study demonstrates Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) improves assessment used tandem with using alone. Such combinations can help responding current conservation challenge improving our surveying capacities at increased spatial temporal scales, facilitating identification priority management areas.