Protection efforts have resulted in ~10% of existing fish biomass on coral reefs.

The amount of ocean protected from fishing and other human impacts has often been used as a metric of conservation progress. However, protection efforts have highly variable outcomes that depend on local conditions, which makes it difficult to quantify what coral reef protection efforts to date have actually achieved at a global scale. Here, we develop a predictive model of how local conditions influence conservation outcomes on ~2,600 coral reef sites across 44 ecoregions, which we used to quantify how much more fish biomass there is on coral reefs compared to a modeled scenario with no protection.

Can juvenile supply predict future abundance of large-bodied reef fishes?

The extent to which juvenile abundance can predict future populations of lethrinids at Ningaloo Reef was assessed using size frequency data collected over 13 consecutive years. Annual abundance of juvenile lethrinids (<5 cm TL) was highest in northern Ningaloo during La Niña years, when seawater is warmer and oceanic currents stronger. Juvenile lethrinid abundance explained 35% of the variance in 1-2 year-old Lethrinus nebulosus abundance the following year, a steeper relationship in the north suggesting greater survival of juveniles.

Research priorities for the sustainability of coral-rich western Pacific seascapes.

Nearly a billion people depend on tropical seascapes. The need to ensure sustainable use of these vital areas is recognised, as one of 17 policy commitments made by world leaders, in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 ('Life below Water') of the United Nations. SDG 14 seeks to secure marine sustainability by 2030.

Macroalgae exhibit diverse responses to human disturbances on coral reefs.

Scientists and managers rely on indicator taxa such as coral and macroalgal cover to evaluate the effects of human disturbance on coral reefs, often assuming a universally positive relationship between local human disturbance and macroalgae. Despite evidence that macroalgae respond to local stressors in diverse ways, there have been few efforts to evaluate relationships between specific macroalgae taxa and local human-driven disturbance. Using genus-level monitoring data from 1205 sites in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, we assess whether macroalgae percent cover correlates with local human disturbance while accounting for factors that could obscure or confound relationships.

Seabird diversity and biomass enhance cross-ecosystem nutrient subsidies.

Mobile consumers are key vectors of cross-ecosystem nutrients, yet have experienced population declines which threaten their ability to fill this role. Despite their importance and vulnerability, there is little information on how consumer biodiversity, in addition to biomass, influences the magnitude of nutrient subsidies. Here, we show that both biomass and diversity of seabirds enhanced the provisioning of nutrients across tropical islands and coral reefs, but their relative influence varied across systems.

Tropical larval and juvenile fish critical swimming speed (U-crit) and morphology data.

Fish swimming capacity is a key life history trait critical to many aspects of their ecology. U-crit (critical) swimming speeds provide a robust, repeatable relative measure of swimming speed that can serve as a useful surrogate for other measures of swimming performance. Here we collate and make available one the most comprehensive datasets on U-crit swimming abilities of tropical marine fish larvae and pelagic juveniles, most of which are reef associated as adults.

Knowledge Gaps in the Biology, Ecology, and Management of the Pacific Crown-of-Thorns Sea Star sp. on Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

AbstractCrown-of-thorns sea stars ( sp.) are among the most studied coral reef organisms, owing to their propensity to undergo major population irruptions, which contribute to significant coral loss and reef degradation throughout the Indo-Pacific. However, there are still important knowledge gaps pertaining to the biology, ecology, and management of sp.

Precision and cost-effectiveness of bioindicators to estimate nutrient regimes on coral reefs.

Bioindicators are useful for determining nutrient regimes in marine environments, but their ability to evaluate corals reefs in different ecological states is poorly understood. The precision, availability and congruency of eight potential bioindicators (brown macroalgae, green macroalgae, turf algae, cyanobacteria, soft corals, zoanthids, sponges, and sediment) and their stable isotopic and elemental signatures (δN, δC, %N, %C, and C:N Ratio) were assessed across 21 reefs in the Inner Seychelles. The coefficient of variation (CoV) for δN showed that green and brown macroalgae were highly precise (2.

Coral larval recruitment in north-western Australia predicted by regional and local conditions.

Understanding ecological processes that shape contemporary and future communities facilitates knowledge-based environmental management. In marine ecosystems, one of the most important processes is the supply of new recruits into a population. Here, we investigated spatiotemporal variability in coral recruitment at 15 reefs throughout the Dampier Archipelago, north-western Australia between 2015 and 2017 and identified the best environmental predictors for coral recruitment patterns over this period.

Size-specific recolonization success by coral-dwelling damselfishes moderates resilience to habitat loss.

Increasing degradation of coral reef ecosystems and specifically, loss of corals is causing significant and widespread declines in the abundance of coral reef fishes, but the proximate cause(s) of these declines are largely unknown. Here, we examine specific responses to host coral mortality for three species of coral-dwelling damselfishes (Dascyllus aruanus, D. reticulatus, and Pomacentrus moluccensis), explicitly testing whether these fishes can successfully move and recolonize nearby coral hosts.

Zone specific trends in coral cover, genera and growth-forms in the World-Heritage listed Ningaloo Reef.

On coral reefs, changes in the cover and relative abundance of hard coral taxa often follow disturbance. Although the ecological responses of common coral taxa have been well documented, little is known about the ecological responses of uncommon coral taxa or of coral morphological groups across multiple adjacent reef zones. We used Multivariate Auto-Regressive State-Space modelling to assess the rate and direction of change of hard coral cover across a variety of coral genera, growth forms, and susceptibility to bleaching and physical damage covering multiple reef zones at northern Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia.

Early recovery dynamics of turbid coral reefs after recurring bleaching events.

The worlds' coral reefs are declining due to the combined effects of natural disturbances and anthropogenic pressures including thermal coral bleaching associated with global climate change. Nearshore corals are receiving increased anthropogenic stress from coastal development and nutrient run-off. Considering forecast increases in global temperatures, greater understanding of drivers of recovery on nearshore coral reefs following widespread bleaching events is required to inform management of local stressors.

Biodiversity increases ecosystem functions despite multiple stressors on coral reefs.

Positive relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) highlight the importance of conserving biodiversity to maintain key ecosystem functions and associated services. Although natural systems are rapidly losing biodiversity due to numerous human-caused stressors, our understanding of how multiple stressors influence BEF relationships comes largely from small, experimental studies. Here, using remote assemblages of coral reef fishes, we demonstrate strong, non-saturating relationships of biodiversity with two ecosystem functions: biomass and productivity.

Changing role of coral reef marine reserves in a warming climate.

Coral reef ecosystems are among the first to fundamentally change in structure due to climate change, which leads to questioning of whether decades of knowledge regarding reef management is still applicable. Here we assess ecological responses to no-take marine reserves over two decades, spanning a major climate-driven coral bleaching event. Pre-bleaching reserve responses were consistent with a large literature, with higher coral cover, more species of fish, and greater fish biomass, particularly of upper trophic levels.

Meeting fisheries, ecosystem function, and biodiversity goals in a human-dominated world.

The worldwide decline of coral reefs necessitates targeting management solutions that can sustain reefs and the livelihoods of the people who depend on them. However, little is known about the context in which different reef management tools can help to achieve multiple social and ecological goals. Because of nonlinearities in the likelihood of achieving combined fisheries, ecological function, and biodiversity goals along a gradient of human pressure, relatively small changes in the context in which management is implemented could have substantial impacts on whether these goals are likely to be met.

Thermal stress induces persistently altered coral reef fish assemblages.

Ecological communities are reorganizing in response to warming temperatures. For continuous ocean habitats this reorganization is characterized by large-scale species redistribution, but for tropical discontinuous habitats such as coral reefs, spatial isolation coupled with strong habitat dependence of fish species imply that turnover and local extinctions are more significant mechanisms. In these systems, transient marine heatwaves are causing coral bleaching and profoundly altering habitat structure, yet despite severe bleaching events becoming more frequent and projections indicating annual severe bleaching by the 2050s at most reefs, long-term effects on the diversity and structure of fish assemblages remain unclear.

Seabird nutrient subsidies alter patterns of algal abundance and fish biomass on coral reefs following a bleaching event.

Cross-ecosystem nutrient subsidies play a key role in the structure and dynamics of recipient communities, but human activities are disrupting these links. Because nutrient subsidies may also enhance community stability, the effects of losing these inputs may be exacerbated in the face of increasing climate-related disturbances. Nutrients from seabirds nesting on oceanic islands enhance the productivity and functioning of adjacent coral reefs, but it is unknown whether these subsidies affect the response of coral reefs to mass bleaching events or whether the benefits of these nutrients persist following bleaching.

Trait structure and redundancy determine sensitivity to disturbance in marine fish communities.

Trait diversity is believed to influence ecosystem dynamics through links between organismal traits and ecosystem processes. Theory predicts that key traits and high trait redundancy-large species richness and abundance supporting the same traits-can buffer communities against environmental disturbances. While experiments and data from simple ecological systems lend support, large-scale evidence from diverse, natural systems under major disturbance is lacking.

Publisher Correction: Productive instability of coral reef fisheries after climate-driven regime shifts.

In the version of this Article originally published, a technical error meant two proof corrections were not actioned. In the sentence that started "Fishery changes were underpinned…", a citation to ref. was missing, and that to ref.

Productive instability of coral reef fisheries after climate-driven regime shifts.

Tropical coastal communities are highly reliant on coral reefs, which provide nutrition and employment for millions of people. Climate-driven coral bleaching events are fundamentally changing coral reef ecosystems and are predicted to reduce productivity of coral reef fish and fisheries, with significant implications for food security and livelihoods. Yet evidence of long-term bleaching impacts on coral reef fishery productivity is lacking.