Correlations between abundance of organisms and their habitat have often be
en used as a measure of the importance of particular habitat features. Howe
ver, experimental manipulation of the habitat provides a more unequivocal e
stimate of its importance. In this study we quantified how fish communities
on small patch reefs covaried with changes in benthic cover habitat featur
es. A random sample of small patch reefs was selected and both fish abundan
ce and habitat measures recorded. Naturally occurring patch reefs could be
classed into three habitat types based on their benthic cover. Reefs domina
ted by massive soft corals were the most abundant (50%), followed by those
dominated by rock and soft corals in equal proportions (36%), then reefs do
minated by branching corals (14%). Fish assemblages differed between the re
ef types. Communities on soft-coral-dominated and rock/soft-coral-dominated
patch reefs formed a continuum of species responses correlated with degree
of soft coral cover. In contrast, branching-coral-dominated reefs were occ
upied by a more discrete set of species. We tested the role of soft corals
in contributing to this pattern by experimentally reducing soft coral cover
on patch reefs from a baseline level of similar to 67% to similar to 33% a
nd similar to6%, and monitoring the experiment over 2 years. Contrary to ex
pectations derived from the correlative data, and in contrast with previous
manipulations of hard corals, soft-coral disturbance did not generate any
corresponding changes in the fish assemblage. This "negative" result indica
ted that the quality and heterogeneity of habitat generated by soft corals
on patch reefs was indistinguishable from equivalent-sized habitat patches
formed by bare rock alone. Nevertheless, because soft corals are living org
anisms they have the potential to generate indirect effects by interacting
with other organisms such as hard corals. In the long-term, we hypothesize
that biotic interactions between habitat forming organisms might affect com
position of fish assemblages on patch reefs.