摘要：Community structure of coral reef fishes in relation to habitat and depth in the northern Gulf of Aqaba/Jordan were studied by visual census method. Changes of the fish community structures between summer and winter were determined. A total of 27882 fish individuals representing 65 species and 16 families were recorded. Fifty five and fifty eight species were recorded during summer and winter, respectively. The most abundant species was Neopomacentrus mir^ae (Arabian damselfish) with relative abundance (RA) of 64.3%. This was followed by Pseudanthias squamipinnis (RA= 2.9%), Pomacentrus trichourus (RA=1.14%) and Dascyllus aruanus (RA=0.7%). The lowest number of individuals was found at the back reef flat. In terms of fish families, the most common were Pomacentridae (RA=70.16%), followed by Ser-ranidae (RA=27.8%) and Labridae (RA=0.77%), which together constituted about 95% of the total fish population. The results indicate significant differences in fish assemblages between summer and winter seasons (p<0.001) for the number of individuals (N), Species richness (d) Shannon-Wiener Diversity Index (H') and Evenness (J). The number of individuals in summer season was much higher than in winter season, possibly due to the spawning season that occurred in summer. The results of fish - coral relationship showed that branching corals were the most abundant benthic coral forms in the studied site, followed by massive and encrusting corals. There was a strong correlation coefficient between branching corals vs. number of fish species (S) (R=0.72), as well as between encrusting coral vs. number of species (S) (R=0.71), also the total living corals vs. number of species (S) (R=0.555). On the other hand, week correlation was observed between the number of species (S) vs. other coral forms. Therefore, strong links relationship between coral and various fish species in the coral reef environment.
