The future of hyperdiverse tropical ecosystems

Coral reefs are in global decline. Reversing this trend is a primary management objective but doing so depends on understanding what keeps reefs in desirable states (ie “functional”). Although there is evidence that coral reefs thrive under certain conditions (eg moderate water temperatures, limited fishing pressure), the dynamic processes that promote ecosystem functioning and its internal drivers (ie community structure) are poorly defined and explored. Specifically, despite decades of research suggesting a positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning across biomes, few studies have explored this relationship in coral reef systems. We propose a practical definition of coral reef functioning, centered on eight complementary ecological processes: calcium carbonate production and bioerosion, primary production and herbivory, secondary production and predation, and nutrient uptake and release. Connecting research on species niches, functional diversity of communities, and rates of the eight key processes can provide a novel, quantitative understanding of reef functioning and its dependence on coral reef communities that will chart the transition of coral reefs in the Anthropocene. This will contribute urgently needed guidance for the management of these important ecosystems.

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“…This approach may well be useful in other tropical ecosystems for which similar knowledge gaps exist (Barlow et al . ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…However, there is a critical information gap regarding whether there are generalities in the relationship between biodiversity and ecological processes across high‐diversity systems, especially given the imperiled future of tropical species and ecosystems and an urgent need for broadly applicable management strategies (Barlow et al . ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

Coral reef ecosystem functioning: eight core processes and the role of biodiversity

Brandl

Rasher

Côté

et al. 2019

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

214

177

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“…Work has begun to address the crucial data and knowledge gaps linking the structure and function of natural ecosystems to the distal socioeconomic and cultural drivers that underpin their proximate drivers of change. Examples include the socioeconomic drivers of biodiversity loss and societal response capacities of hyperdiverse tropical ecosystems (Barlow et al, ), quantitative data on land grabbing and the international trade of coral reef resources (Norström et al, ), and the increasing amount of social science quantitative indicators available for use in social–ecological systems research and sustainability science (Hicks, Levine et al, ). These types of data can improve our ability to predict the dynamics of natural ecosystems (Hicks, Crowder et al, ), including coral reefs.…”

Section: Socioeconomic and Cultural Drivers: A New Reality For Coral mentioning

confidence: 99%

Coral reef ecology in the Anthropocene

et al. 2019

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We are in the Anthropocene—an epoch where humans are the dominant force of planetary change. Ecosystems increasingly reflect rapid human‐induced, socioeconomic and cultural selection rather than being a product of their surrounding natural biophysical setting. This poses the intriguing question: To what extent do existing ecological paradigms capture and explain the current ecological patterns and processes we observe? We argue that, although biophysical drivers still influence ecosystem structure and function at particular scales, their ability to offer predictive capacity over coupled social–ecological systems is increasingly compromised as we move further into the Anthropocene. Traditionally, the dynamics of coral reefs have been studied in response to their proximate drivers of change rather than their underlying socioeconomic and cultural drivers. We hypothesise this is limiting our ability to accurately predict spatial and temporal changes in coral reef ecosystem structure and function. We propose “social–ecological macroecology” as a novel approach within the field of coral reef ecology to a) identify the interactive effects of biophysical and socioeconomic and cultural drivers of coral reef ecosystems across spatial and temporal scales; b) test the robustness of existing coral reef paradigms; c) explore whether existing paradigms can be adapted to capture the dynamics of contemporary coral reefs; and d) if they cannot, develop novel coral reef social–ecological paradigms, where human dynamics are part of the paradigms rather than the drivers of them. Human socioeconomic and cultural processes must become embedded in coral reef ecological theory and practice as much as biophysical processes are today if we are to predict and manage these systems successfully in this era of rapid change. This necessary shift in our approach to coral reef ecology will be challenging and will require truly interdisciplinary collaborations between the natural and social sciences. A plain language summary is available for this article.

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“…Yet, we still do not comprehend many of the complex relationships that underpin energy flow in ecological communities (Blois, Zarnetske, Fitzpatrick, & Finnegan, ). Nowhere is this chasm more precarious than in the world's tropics, where the scope of biotic interactions in hyperdiverse communities is high, and a plethora of human‐induced disturbances threaten the persistence of ecosystems (Barlow et al, ). This poses a monumental challenge for ecologists (du Toit, Walker, & Campbell, ), especially because biodiversity loss often results in the breakdown of biotic interactions that underpin ecosystem functioning (Valiente‐Banuet et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconstructing hyperdiverse food webs: Gut content metabarcoding as a tool to disentangle trophic interactions on coral reefs

et al. 2019

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Anthropogenic stressors have strong impacts on ecosystems. To understand their influence, detailed knowledge about trophic relationships among species is critical. However, this requires both exceptional resolution in dietary assessments and sampling breadth within communities, especially for highly diverse, tropical ecosystems. We used gut content metabarcoding across a broad range of coral reef fishes (8 families, 22 species) in Mo'orea, French Polynesia, to test whether this technique has the potential to capture the structure of a hyperdiverse marine food web. Moreover, we explored whether taxonomic groups (families) and traditional, broad‐scale trophic assignments explained fish diet across four different metrics of quantifying predator–prey interactions. Metabarcoding yielded a large number (4,341) of unique operational taxonomic units (i.e. prey) with high‐resolution taxonomic assignments (i.e. often to the level of genus or species). We demonstrate that across multiple metrics, taxonomic group at the family level is a consistently better, albeit still weak, predictor of empirical trophic relationships than frequently used, broad‐scale functional assignments. Our method also reveals a complex trophic network with fine‐scale partitioning among species, further emphasizing the importance of examining fish diets beyond broad trophic categories. We demonstrate the capacity of metabarcoding to reconstruct diverse and complex food webs with exceptional resolution, a significant advancement from traditional food web reconstruction. Furthermore, this method allows us to pinpoint the trophic niche of species with niche‐based modelling, even across hyperdiverse species assemblages such as coral reefs. In conjunction with complementary techniques such as stable isotope analysis, applying metabarcoding to whole communities will provide unparalleled information about energy and nutrient fluxes and inform their susceptibility to disturbances even in the world's most diverse ecosystems.

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The future of hyperdiverse tropical ecosystems

Cited by 507 publications

References 158 publications

Coral reef ecosystem functioning: eight core processes and the role of biodiversity

Coral reef ecosystem functioning: eight core processes and the role of biodiversity

Coral reef ecology in the Anthropocene

Reconstructing hyperdiverse food webs: Gut content metabarcoding as a tool to disentangle trophic interactions on coral reefs

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