204 
Fishery Bulletin 108(2) 
Similarity 
Figure 5 
Dendrogram depicting relationships (based on Bray Curtis similarities) of 
the dominant taxonomic assemblages between months. Larval concentrations 
for dominant taxa were square-root transformed before analyses. 
tremely abundant in estuarine and inner shelf waters 
and serve important ecological roles as forage fishes 
(e.g., B. patronus, C. chrysu/'us) and as predators link- 
ing primary consumers to higher trophic levels (e.g., M. 
undulatus, C. ai'enarius ) (Naughton and Saloman, 1981; 
Overstreet and Heard, 1982; Sheridan et al., 1984; 
Franks et al., 2003). The larvae of these relatively few 
taxa often comprise the majority of ichthyoplankton in 
surveys throughout the northern Gulf of Mexico (Ditty, 
1986; Cowan and Shaw, 1988; Tolan et al., 1997). 
Flatfish larvae (e.g., paralichthyids and cynoglossids) 
represented another dominant coastal group. Cynoglos- 
sids (Sytnphurus spp.) were common year-round in our 
study, which indicates that our collections contained 
multiple species. These fishes are commonly reported in 
ichthyoplankton surveys throughout the Gulf of Mexico, 
but identification of larvae (and adults) is problematic 
owing to high species richness and overlapping mer- 
istics (Farooqi et al., 2006b). Similarly, Citharichthys 
spp. were abundant year-round, as were C. spilopterus. 
Again, identification down to species is problematic 
because five species (C. arctifrons, C. cornotus, C. gym- 
norhinus, C. macrops, and C. spilopterus) are found in 
the study region (Lyczkowski-Shultz and Bond, 2006). 
Although efforts were made to identify larvae conser- 
vatively, some of our C. spilopterus may have included 
congeners. This issue of questionable identification ap- 
pears less likely for the Etropus species complex, which 
was also abundant, primarily E. crossotus and E. mi- 
crostomus. 
Equally notable in our survey was the absence (or 
rarity) of larvae from taxa that are common in our 
sampling region as adults. For example, serranine 
(seabasses) serranid larvae were collected, but epi- 
nepheline (grouper) larvae were not. Similarly absent 
(or rare) were larvae from other recreational and com- 
mercially important species such Coryphaena hippurus 
(Coryphaenidae), Rachycentron canadum (Rachycentri- 
dae), Balistes eapriscus ( Balistidae), Lobotes surina- 
mensis (Lobotidae), Chaetodipterus faber (Ephippidae), 
and Mugil cephalus (Mugilidae), all of which spawn in 
coastal or offshore waters of Alabama. The fact that 
we did not collect some of these taxa is not surprising 
(e.g., B. eapriscus, M. cephalus) because they are more 
commonly collected in the neuston (which we did not 
sample). The absence of grouper larvae is perplex- 
ing, even though the rarity of epinepheline larvae has 
been documented in the northern Gulf of Mexico. For 
example, only 37 grouper larvae were collected in gulf- 
wide SEAMAP ichthyoplankton surveys between 1982 
and 1999 (>7000 samples) (Lyczkowski-Shultz et al. 1 ). 
Most of the grouper larvae were collected at offshore 
SEAMAP sampling stations, which indicates that their 
occurrence in nearshore environments may be rare. 
It is possible that the limited spatial extent of our 
survey (i.e., a single station) may have influenced our 
estimates of larval fish concentrations and variability, 
because coastal marine processes that influence larval 
fish dynamics are often site-specific (e.g., local wind 
regimes, tidal flows, river discharge), but the overall 
seasonal supply of larvae available at our sampling 
station is likely representative of the ichthyofauna from 
a larger northcentral Gulf of Mexico region between 
the 87°W and 89°W longitude (Boschung, 1992). 
The main objective of this study was to describe 
taxon-specific seasonality for larval fishes collected in 
the survey region. For several reasons, we limited our 
seasonal analyses to water temperature, as opposed to 
