The world’s coral reefs are experiencing increasing volatility in coral cover, largely because of anthropogenic environmental change, highlighting the need to understand how such volatility will influence the structure and dynamics of reef assemblages. These changes may influence not only richness or evenness but also the temporal stability of species’ relative abundances (temporal beta-diversity). Here, we analyzed reef fish assemblage time series from the Great Barrier Reef to show that, overall, 75% of the variance in abundance among species was attributable to persistent differences in species’ long-term mean abundances. However, the relative importance of stochastic fluctuations in abundance was higher on reefs that experienced greater volatility in coral cover, whereas it did not vary with drivers of alpha-diversity. These findings imply that increased coral cover volatility decreases temporal stability in relative abundances of fishes, a transformation that is not detectable from static measures of biodiversity.

中文翻译：

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珊瑚覆盖的波动会侵蚀珊瑚礁鱼类群落中的生态位结构，但不会侵蚀多样性

世界上的珊瑚礁正在经历越来越多的珊瑚覆盖波动，这主要是由于人为环境变化，突出了了解这种波动将如何影响珊瑚礁组合的结构和动态的必要性。这些变化不仅会影响丰富度或均匀度，还会影响物种相对丰度的时间稳定性（时间 β 多样性）。在这里，我们分析了来自大堡礁的珊瑚鱼组合时间序列，表明总体而言，75% 的物种间丰度差异可归因于物种长期平均丰度的持续差异。然而，在珊瑚覆盖率波动较大的珊瑚礁上，丰度随机波动的相对重要性更高，而它并没有随着阿尔法多样性的驱动因素而变化。