Variation in farming damselfish behaviour creates a competitive landscape of risk on coral reefs.

Interspecific interactions are fundamental drivers of animal space use. Yet while non-consumptive effects of predation risk on prey space use are well-known, the risk of aggressive interactions on space use of competitors is largely unknown. We apply the landscape of risk framework to competition-driven space use for the first time, with the hypothesis that less aggressive competitors may alter their behaviour to avoid areas of high competitor density.

The relative influence of sea surface temperature anomalies on the benthic composition of an Indo-Pacific and Caribbean coral reef over the last decade.

Rising ocean temperatures are the primary driver of coral reef declines throughout the tropics. Such declines include reductions in coral cover that facilitate the monopolization of the benthos by other taxa such as macroalgae, resulting in reduced habitat complexity and biodiversity. Long-term monitoring projects present rare opportunities to assess how sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) influence changes in the benthic composition of coral reefs across distinct locations.

Multiple cleaner species provide simultaneous services to coral reef fish clients.

Cleaning symbioses on tropical coral reefs are typically documented between two species: a single client fish and one or more conspecific cleaners. However, multiple cleaner species living sympatrically in the Caribbean have been anecdotally reported to simultaneously clean the same client. Nothing is known about the patterns and processes driving these interactions, which may differ from those involving a single cleaner species.

Shelter use interactions of invasive lionfish with commercially and ecologically important native invertebrates on Caribbean coral reefs.

Indo-Pacific lionfish have become invasive throughout the western Atlantic. Their predatory effects have been the focus of much research and are suggested to cause declines in native fish abundance and diversity across the invaded range. However, little is known about their non-consumptive effects, or their effects on invertebrates.

Artisanal fish fences pose broad and unexpected threats to the tropical coastal seascape.

Gear restrictions are an important management tool in small-scale tropical fisheries, improving sustainability and building resilience to climate change. Yet to identify the management challenges and complete footprint of individual gears, a broader systems approach is required that integrates ecological, economic and social sciences. Here we apply this approach to artisanal fish fences, intensively used across three oceans, to identify a previously underrecognized gear requiring urgent management attention.

Aggregating behaviour in invasive Caribbean lionfish is driven by habitat complexity.

Caribbean lionfish (Pterois spp.) are considered the most heavily impacting invasive marine vertebrate ever recorded. However, current management is largely inadequate, relying on opportunistic culling by recreational SCUBA divers.

Lack of strategic service provisioning by Pederson's cleaner shrimp (Ancylomenes pedersoni) highlights independent evolution of cleaning behaviors between ocean basins.

Marine cleaning interactions have been useful model systems for exploring evolutionary game theory and explaining the stability of mutualism. In the Indo-Pacific, cleaner organisms will occasionally "cheat" and remove live tissue, clients use partner control mechanisms to maintain cleaner honesty, and cleaners strategically increase service quality for predatory clients that can "punish" more severely. The extent to which reef communities in the Caribbean have evolved similar strategies for maintaining the stability of these symbioses is less clear.

Depth-dependent effects of culling-do mesophotic lionfish populations undermine current management?

Invasive lionfish ( and ) have spread widely across the western Atlantic and are recognized as a major threat to native marine biodiversity. Although lionfish inhabit both shallow reefs and mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs; reefs from 30 to 150 m depth), the primary management response implemented by many countries has been diver-led culling limited to reefs less than 30 m. However, many reef fish undergo ontogenetic migrations, with the largest and therefore most fecund individuals found at greatest depths.

Identifying zooplankton community changes between shallow and upper-mesophotic reefs on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, Caribbean.

Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs, reefs 30-150 m) are understudied, yet the limited research conducted has been biased towards large sessile taxa, such as scleractinian corals and sponges, or mobile taxa such as fishes. Here we investigate zooplankton communities on shallow reefs and MCEs around Utila on the southern Mesoamerican Barrier Reef using planktonic light traps. Zooplankton samples were sorted into broad taxonomic groups.

Assessing Caribbean Shallow and Mesophotic Reef Fish Communities Using Baited-Remote Underwater Video (BRUV) and Diver-Operated Video (DOV) Survey Techniques.

Fish surveys form the backbone of reef monitoring and management initiatives throughout the tropics, and understanding patterns in biases between techniques is crucial if outputs are to address key objectives optimally. Often biases are not consistent across natural environmental gradients such as depth, leading to uncertainty in interpretation of results. Recently there has been much interest in mesophotic reefs (reefs from 30-150 m depth) as refuge habitats from fishing pressure, leading to many comparisons of reef fish communities over depth gradients.

Reef Fish Community Biomass and Trophic Structure Changes across Shallow to Upper-Mesophotic Reefs in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, Caribbean.

Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs; reefs 30-150m depth) are of increased research interest because of their potential role as depth refuges from many shallow reef threats. Yet few studies have identified patterns in fish species composition and trophic group structure between MCEs and their shallow counterparts. Here we explore reef fish species and biomass distributions across shallow to upper-MCE Caribbean reef gradients (5-40m) around Utila, Honduras, using a diver-operated stereo-video system.

Do reef fish habituate to diver presence? Evidence from two reef sites with contrasting historical levels of SCUBA intensity in the Bay Islands, Honduras.

Contact between humans and the marine environment is increasing, but the capacity of communities to adapt to human presence remains largely unknown. The popularization of SCUBA diving has added a new dimension to human impacts in aquatic systems and, although individual-level impacts have been identified, cumulative effects on ecosystem function and community-wide responses are unclear. In principle, habituation may mitigate the consequences of human presence on the biology of an individual and allow the quick resumption of its ecological roles, but this has not been documented in aquatic systems.

Uncovering the volatile nature of tropical coastal marine ecosystems in a changing world.

Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs), in particular dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and isoprene, have fundamental ecological, physiological and climatic roles. Our current understanding of these roles is almost exclusively established from terrestrial or oceanic environments but signifies a potentially major, but largely unknown, role for BVOCs in tropical coastal marine ecosystems. The tropical coast is a transition zone between the land and ocean, characterized by highly productive and biodiverse coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves, which house primary producers that are amongst the greatest emitters of BVOCs on the planet.