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Fishery Bulletin 106(3) 
Height 
_L 
Lesser amberjack 
Silk snapper 
Tilefish 
Yellowedge grouper 
Snowy grouper 
Blueline tilefish 
Banded rudderfish 
Red grouper 
White grunt 
Scamp — 
Gray triggerfish 
Vermilion snapper 
Red porgy 
Black sea bass 
Gag 
Red snapper 
Almaco jack 
Greater amberjack 
Rock hind 
Hogfish 
Jolthead porgy 
Knobbed porgy 
Red hind 
Ocean triggerfish 
Whitebone porgy 
Bluestriped grunt - 
Lane snapper - 
Crevalle jack 
Blue runner 
Gray snapper 
Yellowtail snapper 
Black grouper 
Mutton snapper 
Margate 
French grunt 
Figure 4 
Dendrogram from hierarchical cluster analysis of species in the commercial sector. 
Height measures similarity among species within a branch, with a value of 1.0 rep- 
resenting the lowest similarity. Scientific names are provided in the Appendix. 
synchrony in this reef fish complex has yet to be estab- 
lished, and we therefore urge precaution before using 
indicator species. 
We did find positive evidence of species assemblages 
on the basis of landings, but these were not necessar- 
ily ecological assemblages. Although assemblages in 
landings may reflect those in nature, the two could 
differ if some species are preferentially retained from 
the catch or are more vulnerable to exploitation. Still, 
assemblages in landings have direct implications from 
the perspective of managing fisheries, in terms of 
reducing bycatch and controlling fishing effort across 
species. 
Nondimensional scaling analysis revealed that the 
species assemblages are not strongly coherent. Such 
loose structure has also been found in assemblages 
north of our study area (Mahon et ah, 1998). Nonethe- 
less, agreement between the headboat and commer- 
