Chong, F., Sommer, B., Stant, G. et al. (9 more authors) (2023) High-latitude marginal reefs support fewer but bigger corals than their tropical counterparts. Ecography, 2023 (12). e06835. ISSN 0906-7590
Abstract
Anthropogenic impacts are typically detrimental to tropical coral reefs, but the effect of increasing environmental stress and variability on the size structure of coral communities remains poorly understood. This limits our ability to effectively conserve coral reef ecosystems because size specific dynamics are rarely incorporated. Our aim is to quantify variation in the size structure of coral populations across 20 sites along a tropical-to-subtropical environmental gradient on the east coast of Australia (~ 23 to 30°S), to determine how size structure changes with a gradient of sea surface temperature, turbidity, productivity and light levels. We use two approaches: 1) linear regression with summary statistics (such as median size) as response variables, a method frequently favoured by ecologists and 2) compositional functional regression, a novel method using entire size–frequency distributions as response variables. We then predict coral population size structure with increasing environmental stress and variability. Together, we find fewer but larger coral colonies in marginal reefs, where conditions are typically more variable and stressful, than in tropical reefs. Our model predicts that coral populations may become gradually dominated by larger colonies (> 148 cm2) with increasing environmental stress. Fewer but bigger corals suggest low survival of smaller corals, slow growth, and/or poor recruitment. This finding is concerning for the future of coral reefs, as it implies that current marginal populations, or future reefs in increasingly stressful environmental conditions may have low recovery potential. We highlight the importance of continuously monitoring changes to population structure over biogeographic scales.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | compositional functional regression; coral reef; environmental gradient; population structure; probability density function; size-frequency distribution |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 19 Jun 2024 15:31 |
Last Modified: | 19 Jun 2024 15:31 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley Open Access |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/ecog.06835 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:213621 |