The emergent role of small-bodied herbivores in pre-empting phase shifts on degraded coral reefs

Kuempel, Caitlin D.; Altieri, Andrew H.

doi:10.1038/srep39670

Cited by 49 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…comm.). Echinometra viridis has been recorded as more abundant in Bocas del Toro than E. lucunter (Guzmán and Guevara 1998a, b, Sangil and Guzmán 2016a, Kuempel and Altieri 2017, and our qualitative observations found that E. viridis accounts for the vast majority of Echinometra subfossil spines in the cores. The Lytechinus/Tripneustes group is comprised of three species: L. williamsi, L. variegatus, and T. ventricosus.…”

Section: Reconstructing Urchin Community Dynamics and Ecological Driverssupporting

confidence: 55%

“…Echinometra dominates the subfossil assemblage over the past 3000 yr, comprising on average 85% of urchin spine weight, followed by Lytechinus/ Tripneustes (12%), then Diadema (3%). The vast majority of Echinometra spines were E. viridis, which has been described as the dominant urchin at all depths on modern reefs in Bahia Almirante (Guzmán and Guevara 1998a, b, Sangil and Guzmán 2016a, Kuempel and Altieri 2017 and whose spines dominated the spine assemblage in reef cores collected in a previous study in Bahia Almirante (Aronson et al 2004). Analysis of temporal trends in abundance corrected for sediment weight shows an increase in Echinometra, Lytechinus/ Tripneustes, and all urchins and a decline in Diadema across the full time series when all cores are combined (Fig.…”

Section: Long-term Trends In Urchin and Coral Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…Our results demonstrate Diadema recovery may assist in the recovery of Madracis mirabilis in particular, a coral which has proved resistant to bleaching (Cowan 2006, Hernández-Delgado et al 2006, DeBose et al 2013 but is nevertheless in decline on many Caribbean reefs (Bak and Luckhurst 1980, Robbart et al 2008, Álvarez-Filip et al 2009). On the other hand, the historical rarity of Diadema on reefs in Bahia Almirante and the effective control of macroalgae by Echinometra on these same reefs today (Kuempel and Altieri 2017) suggest that Diadema recovery may not be a critical conservation priority for this part of the Caribbean. …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While pre-Diadema mortality surveys state that Diadema is generally common or ubiquitous in shallow zones, many surveys found that Echinometra in general (and Echinometra viridis in particular) was as abundant as Diadema (Sammarco 1982a, Carpenter 1986. Echinometra viridis currently dominates the reef crest and shallow forereef slope zones of reefs in Bocas del Toro (Guzmán and Guevara 1998a, b, Sangil and Guzmán 2016a, Kuempel and Altieri 2017 and elsewhere in the Caribbean (Aronson et al 2004, Bologna et al 2012. Because no published survey data exist for pre-dieoff urchin communities in Bocas del Toro, it cannot be ruled out that the forereef slopes in this region were in fact dominated by Echinometra and depauperate in Diadema throughout the past millennia, and that the geographic and/or bathymetric extent of Diadema dominance in the Caribbean may have been previously overstated.…”

Section: Baseline Reef Urchin Community Compositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A 3000 year record of Caribbean reef urchin communities reveals causes and consequences of long‐term decline in Diadema antillarum

et al. 2017

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Urchins are the last abundant grazers of macroalgae on most Caribbean reefs following the historical overexploitation of herbivorous fishes. The long-spined urchin Diadema antillarum was particularly effective at controlling macroalgae and facilitating coral dominance on Caribbean reefs until its ecological extinction from a catastrophic disease epidemic in the early 1980s. Despite their important role in the structure and functioning of Caribbean reef ecosystems, the natural dynamics of Caribbean reef urchin communities are poorly known due to the paucity of ecological survey data prior to large-scale human disturbances and the Diadema dieoff. To help resolve the baseline abundances and ecological roles of common urchin taxa, we track changes in urchin abundance and composition over the past 3000 yr from analysis of subfossil urchin spines preserved in reef matrix cores collected in Caribbean Panama. Echinometra consistently dominated the subfossil spine assemblage, while Diadema was consistently rare in the subfossil record in this region. Rather than increasing during a period of heightened human exploitation of their fish competitors and predators, Diadema began declining over a millennium ago. Convergent cross mapping (CCM) causality analyses reveal that Diadema abundance is causally related to coral community composition. Diadema is negatively affected by Acropora cervicornis dominance, likely due to the tight association between this coral and the threespot damselfish, an effective Diadema competitor. Conversely, Diadema positively affects the abundance of the coral Madracis mirabilis, possibly via its control of macroalgae. Causal relationships were not detected among abundances of individual urchin taxa, indicating that inter-specific echinoid competition is not a factor limiting Diadema recovery. Our detailed record of prehistorical and historical urchin community dynamics suggests that the failure of Diadema to recover over 30 yr after its mass mortality event may be due in part to the prey release of damselfish following the long-term overfishing of piscivorous fishes.

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Section: Reconstructing Urchin Community Dynamics and Ecological Driverssupporting

confidence: 55%

Section: Long-term Trends In Urchin and Coral Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 72%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Baseline Reef Urchin Community Compositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A 3000 year record of Caribbean reef urchin communities reveals causes and consequences of long‐term decline in Diadema antillarum

et al. 2017

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“…The long-term effects of hypoxia are potentially different from, and more substantial than, those of other disturbances on coral reefs because hypoxia affects a broad range of taxa including consumers, habitat formers, and pathogens. However, at least some functional groups show high resilience, because several years after the event the diversity and abundance of mobile invertebrates on previously hypoxic reefs was found to be the same as, or higher than, the diversity and abundance on unaffected reefs (33), and grazing pressure has been sufficient to preempt overgrowth of dead coral by algae (34).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Tropical dead zones and mass mortalities on coral reefs

Altieri

Harrison

Seemann

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

253

236

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Degradation of coastal water quality in the form of low dissolved oxygen levels (hypoxia) can harm biodiversity, ecosystem function, and human wellbeing. Extreme hypoxic conditions along the coast, leading to what are often referred to as "dead zones," are known primarily from temperate regions. However, little is known about the potential threat of hypoxia in the tropics, even though the known risk factors, including eutrophication and elevated temperatures, are common. Here we document an unprecedented hypoxic event on the Caribbean coast of Panama and assess the risk of dead zones to coral reefs worldwide. The event caused coral bleaching and massive mortality of corals and other reef-associated organisms, but observed shifts in community structure combined with laboratory experiments revealed that not all coral species are equally sensitive to hypoxia. Analyses of global databases showed that coral reefs are associated with more than half of the known tropical dead zones worldwide, with >10% of all coral reefs at elevated risk for hypoxia based on local and global risk factors. Hypoxic events in the tropics and associated mortality events have likely been underreported, perhaps by an order of magnitude, because of the lack of local scientific capacity for their detection. Monitoring and management plans for coral reef resilience should incorporate the growing threat of coastal hypoxia and include support for increased detection and research capacity.biodiversity | coral bleaching | dissolved oxygen | hypoxia | water quality

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Identity of coral reef herbivores drives variation in ecological processes over multiple spatial scales

Ruttenberg

Adam

Durán

et al. 2019

Ecological Applications

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Overexploitation of key species can negatively impact ecosystem processes, so understanding the ecological roles of individual species is critical for improving ecosystem management. Here, we use coral reefs and the process of herbivory as a model to examine how species identity of consumers influence ecosystem processes to inform management of these consumers. Herbivorous fishes can facilitate the recruitment, growth, and recovery of corals by controlling the fast‐growing algae that can outcompete corals for space. However, herbivorous fish guilds are species rich with important differences among species in diet, movement, and habitat preferences. Yet, we lack a general understanding of (1) how these species‐specific differences in feeding and behavior scale up to reef‐wide rates of ecosystem processes and (2) how species identity and diversity impact these processes. To address these knowledge gaps, we used field observations to derive key species‐ and size‐specific foraging parameters for nine herbivorous parrotfish species on coral reefs in the Florida Keys, USA. We then combined these foraging parameters with fish survey data spanning multiple spatial scales to estimate the rates of three ecosystem processes: area of reef grazed, amount of macroalgae removed, and rate of bioerosion. We found that predicted rates of ecological processes varied dramatically among habitats and among reef zones within habitats, driven primarily by variation in abundance among species with different foraging behaviors. In some cases, assemblages with similar levels of total biomass had different rates of ecological processes, and in others, assemblages with different biomass had similar rates of ecological processes. Importantly, our models of herbivory using species‐specific parameters differed from those using genus‐level parameters by up to 300% in rates of ecological processes, highlighting the importance of herbivore identity in this system. Our results indicate that there may be little overlap in the roles species play, suggesting that some systems may be vulnerable to loss of ecological function with the reduction or loss of just a few species. This work provides a framework that can be applied across the region to predict how changes in management may affect the ecological impact of these important herbivores.

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The emergent role of small-bodied herbivores in pre-empting phase shifts on degraded coral reefs

Cited by 49 publications

References 51 publications

A 3000 year record of Caribbean reef urchin communities reveals causes and consequences of long‐term decline in Diadema antillarum

A 3000 year record of Caribbean reef urchin communities reveals causes and consequences of long‐term decline in Diadema antillarum

Tropical dead zones and mass mortalities on coral reefs

Identity of coral reef herbivores drives variation in ecological processes over multiple spatial scales

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