A study of the survival rate of Acropora corals outplanted in Damselfish territories : A minor field study in Malolo Lailai, Fiji

Sammanfattning: This bachelor thesis was executed as a Minor Field Study (MFS) in Malolo Lailai Island, Fiji.The Minor Field Study was funded by the state agency Swedish International DevelopmentCooperation Agency (SIDA). The thesis was written during the spring of 2023 at the RoyalInstitute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm and the project was created and executedtogether with the organisation Corals for Conservation (C4C) located in Fiji. Coral reefs around the world are degraded due to many different anthropogenic stressors,where climate change is a major one. This has affected the reefs in Fiji as sea temperaturesare rising which is causing corals to bleach. Efforts are being made to restore the reefs whichincludes outplanting and monitoring corals in degraded reefs. As conditions in the seaschange, corals are increasingly exposed to predators and disease. Against this backgroundthis project was created in order to see if outplanting corals inside or close to a Damselfish(Stegastes nigricans) territory makes any difference to the survival rate of the corals. Theresults show that corals outplanted outside of a Damselfish territory has a higher risk ofexposure to predators as well as foragers which leads to a lower survival rate. The conclusionthat was made was that planting corals inside of a Damselfish territory therefore increases thechances of corals surviving.