To compare among different habitat types, three equivalently
sized (25e30 cm diameter) colonies of either Acropora spathulata or
Pocillopora damicornis were added: one healthy, one bleached and
one recently dead colony. The three coral colonies were arranged in
a triangular configuration with equal distance between the three
colonies. A total of 20 replicate trials were performed for each
species of fish (C. aureofasciatus and C. lunulatus), run sequentially
in each of four different tanks. The actual colonies used in each trial
were randomly assigned from a pool of 10 colonies of each habitat
type; likewise the position of each colony inside each tank was also
randomly assigned for each trial. Three small juveniles of
C. aureofasciatus (mean ¼ 15.52 mm TL 0.37 SE) were released
into the centre of each tank between 1700 and 1800 h, with the trial
beginning the following morning (following Öhman et al., 1998).
The habitat used by each of the three fish was recorded at 10
random times during the day (0630e1600 hrs), with each
observation separated by a minimum of 30 min providing a total of
30 data points per trial.