Coral cover was lowest where water flow was more restricted, such as along the western (leeward) edge of the lagoon and northern edges of the islets as well as in enclosed 'ponds' where the line reefs had grown to the surface, restricting lagoon water circulation.
The sedimentary microfacies of rimmed shelves edge include restricted platform lagoon, platform-margin reef, and talus breccias on slope.
Gasterosteus aculeatus was restricted to lagoons with low habitat isolation and exposure and low vegetation coverage, situated in the outer archipelago.
The carbonate succession (BIe subgroup and BIIa to BIIe subgroups), composed of 11 microfacies (MF), records the evolution of a marine ramp submitted to evaporation, with basinal and low-energy outer-ramp environments (MF1 MF5), biohermal mid-ramp (MF6) and restricted tide-dominated lagoon inner-ramp (MF7 MF9) settings, overlain by lacustrine (MF10) and sabkha (MF11) environments.
The steady cap rock is more likely to be distributed in low-energy depositional environments, corresponding to intershoal sea, low-lying land of open platform and lagoon of restricted platform.
The majority of haplotypes were in the clade EA, while the other two clades had very restricted distributions: the EC haplotypes in the Anzalee lagoon of the Caspian Sea in Iran and the EI haplotype in the Iskar River of the Danube River drainage in Bulgaria (Fig. 2D).
Within the lagoon of Millennium Atoll, the fish assemblages were restricted largely to reef and closely adjacent habitats (Figure 3C).
The system remained predominantly marine and submerged in response to an early-mid Holocene transgression until 4700 cal yr B.P., when sea-level fluctuations and landscape modification restricted marine incursions, modified the exposed landscape and shifted the system toward a lagoon state.
Because coral community development is mainly restricted to the bank's outer rim, fish assemblages likely differ from those occurring on the inner bank lagoon (Figure 1) that is characterized by horizontal limestone pavement on which mainly macroalgae and gorgonians are found.
