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Fish community structure and dynamics are insufficient to mediate coral resilience

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 6, pages 1700–1709 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Coral reefs are being impacted by myriad stressors leading to drastic changes to their structure and function. Fishes play essential roles in driving ecosystem processes on coral reefs but the extent to which these processes are emergent at temporal or ecosystem scales or otherwise masked by other drivers (for example, climatic events and crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks) is poorly understood. Using time series data on fish community composition and coral and macroalgae percentage cover between 2006 and 2017 from 57 sites around Mo’orea, Polynesia, we found that fish community diversity predicts temporal stability in fish biomass but did not translate to temporal stability of coral cover. Furthermore, we found limited evidence of directional influence of fish on coral dynamics at temporal and ecosystem scales and no evidence that fish mediate coral recovery rate from disturbance. Our findings suggest that coral reef fisheries management will benefit from maintaining fish diversity but that this level of management is unlikely to strongly mediate coral loss or recovery over time.

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Fig. 1: Variability across space and time in coral reef benthic cover and fish biomass from Mo’orea, French Polynesia.
Fig. 2: Diversity stabilizes fish community biomass, not coral or macroalgae cover.
Fig. 3: Weak evidence of temporal regulation of coral or macroalgae cover by attributes of the fish community.
Fig. 4: Coral reef fish community attributes do not influence return rate in coral cover from disturbance.

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Data availability

All data to support the analyses and conclusions of this study are available online at https://github.com/timothycline/CoralFishStability.

Code availability

All computer code to support the analyses and conclusions of this study are available online at https://github.com/timothycline/CoralFishStability.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the country of French Polynesia and the people of Mo’orea for allowing the continual study of their marine ecosystems. We would also like to thank the MCR LTER, funded by the US National Science Foundation (OCE-1637396 and earlier awards) and CRIOBE and, in particular, A. Brooks and J. Claudet and all those who assisted in conducting the surveys used here, for their dedicated work generating the datasets used in this study and for making them publicly available. We thank C. Layman, D. Burkepile, T. Walsworth and V. Parravicini for thoughtful comments that greatly improved the manuscript. Support for this study was provided by Lucille and David Packard Fellowship and National Science Foundation OCE no. 1948622 to J.E.A.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Timothy J. Cline, Jacob E. Allgeier.

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  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Timothy J. Cline & Jacob E. Allgeier

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T.J.C. and J.E.A. conceived of the study. T.J.C. analysed the data. T.J.C. and J.E.A. wrote the original manuscript and subsequent revisions.

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Correspondence to Timothy J. Cline or Jacob E. Allgeier.

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Cline, T.J., Allgeier, J.E. Fish community structure and dynamics are insufficient to mediate coral resilience. Nat Ecol Evol 6, 1700–1709 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01882-0

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