The influence of cross-generational warming on the juvenile development of a coral reef fish under ocean warming and acidification.

Marine ecosystems are facing escalating chronic and acute environmental stressors, yet our understanding of how multiple stressors influence individuals is limited. Here, we investigated how projected ocean warming (+1.5 °C) during grandparental (F) and parental (F) generations of the spiny chromis damselfish (Acanthochromis polyacanthus), influences the sensitivity of F juveniles to ocean warming (present-day vs +1.

Major global ports alter light regimes for marine biofouling communities.

Globally, there are more than 17,000 cargo-handling ports that are expected to double in capacity by 2030. Overwater structures are common in ports and create permanently shaded environments that can produce ecological shifts from primary-producer to consumer dominated communities. Yet, the extent of these structures across ports and their impact on light conditions and associated communities in different areas beneath has not been quantified.

Of Clams and Clades: Genetic Diversity and Connectivity of Small Giant Clams () in the Southern Pacific Ocean.

Giant clams ( and ) are large marine bivalves occupying tropical and subtropical reefs in the Indo-Pacific. Giant clam populations have declined in many areas of the Indo-Pacific and continue to be threatened by harvesting and environmental change. The small giant clam () occurs throughout the Indo-Pacific and has been subject to several phylogeographic studies across its range.

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.

Managing nutrition-biodiversity trade-offs on coral reefs.

Coral reefs support an incredible abundance and diversity of fish species, with reef-associated fisheries providing important sources of income, food, and dietary micronutrients to millions of people across the tropics. However, the rapid degradation of the world's coral reefs and the decline in their biodiversity may limit their capacity to supply nutritious and affordable seafood while meeting conservation goals for sustainability. Here, we conduct a global-scale analysis of how the nutritional quality of reef fish assemblages (nutritional contribution to the recommended daily intake of calcium, iron, and zinc contained in an average 100 g fish on the reef) relates to key environmental, socioeconomic, and ecological conditions, including two key metrics of fish biodiversity.

From little things big things grow: enhancement of an acoustic telemetry network to monitor broad-scale movements of marine species along Australia's east coast.

Background: Acoustic telemetry has become a fundamental tool to monitor the movement of aquatic species. Advances in technology, in particular the development of batteries with lives of > 10 years, have increased our ability to track the long-term movement patterns of many species. However, logistics and financial constraints often dictate the locations and deployment duration of acoustic receivers.

Influence of habitat features on the colonisation of native and non-indigenous species.

Marine artificial structures provide substrates on which organisms can settle and grow. These structures facilitate establishment and spread of non-indigenous species, in part due to their distinct physical features (substrate material, movement, orientation) compared to natural habitat analogues such as rocky shores, and because following construction, they have abundant resources (space) for species to colonise. Despite the perceived importance of these habitat features, few studies have directly compared distributions of native and non-indigenous species or considered how functional identity and associated environmental preferences drive associations.

Variable effects of substrate colour and microtexture on sessile marine taxa in Australian estuaries.

Concrete infrastructure in coastal waters is increasing. While adding complex habitat and manipulating concrete mixtures to enhance biodiversity have been studied, field investigations of sub-millimetre-scale complexity and substrate colour are lacking. Here, the interacting effects of 'colour' (white, grey, black) and 'microtexture' (smooth, 0.

New branched Porolithon species (Corallinales, Rhodophyta) from the Great Barrier Reef, Coral Sea, and Lord Howe Island.

Porolithon is one of the most ecologically important genera of tropical and subtropical crustose (non-geniculate) coralline algae growing abundantly along the shallow margins of coral reefs and functioning to cement reef frameworks. Thalli of branched, fruticose Porolithon specimens from the Indo-Pacific Ocean traditionally have been called P. gardineri, while massive, columnar forms have been called P.

Sustainable reference points for multispecies coral reef fisheries.

Sustainably managing fisheries requires regular and reliable evaluation of stock status. However, most multispecies reef fisheries around the globe tend to lack research and monitoring capacity, preventing the estimation of sustainable reference points against which stocks can be assessed. Here, combining fish biomass data for >2000 coral reefs, we estimate site-specific sustainable reference points for coral reef fisheries and use these and available catch estimates to assess the status of global coral reef fish stocks.

Habitat complexity and predator odours impact on the stress response and antipredation behaviour in coral reef fish.

Mass coral bleaching events coupled with local stressors have caused regional-scale loss of corals on reefs globally. Following the loss of corals, the structural complexity of these habitats is often reduced. By providing shelter, obscuring visual information, or physically impeding predators, habitat complexity can influence predation risk and the perception of risk by prey.

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.

Variation in the parasite communities of three co-occurring herbivorous coral reef fishes.

Parasites are important, diverse, and abundant components of natural ecosystems and can influence the behaviour and health of their hosts, inter- and intraspecific interactions, and ultimately community structure. Coral reefs are one of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems, yet our understanding of the abundance, diversity, and composition of parasite communities of coral reef fishes is limited. Here, the authors aimed to compare the abundance, richness and composition of parasite communities among three co-occurring herbivorous coral reef fishes (the barred rabbitfish Siganus doliatus, Ward's damsel Pomacentrus wardi and the obscure damsel Pomacentrus adelus) from an inshore reef of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).

The effects of marine heatwaves on acute heat tolerance in corals.

Scleractinian coral populations are increasingly exposed to conditions above their upper thermal limits due to marine heatwaves, contributing to global declines of coral reef ecosystem health. However, historic mass bleaching events indicate there is considerable inter- and intra-specific variation in thermal tolerance whereby species, individual coral colonies and populations show differential susceptibility to exposure to elevated temperatures. Despite this, we lack a clear understanding of how heat tolerance varies across large contemporary and historical environmental gradients, or the selective pressures that underpin this variation.

Linking key human-environment theories to inform the sustainability of coral reefs.

Effective solutions to the ongoing "coral reef crisis" will remain limited until the underlying drivers of coral reef degradation are better understood. Here, we conduct a global-scale study of how four key metrics of ecosystem states and processes on coral reefs (top predator presence, reef fish biomass, trait diversity, and parrotfish scraping potential) are explained by 11 indicators based on key human-environment theories from the social sciences. Our global analysis of >1,500 reefs reveals three key findings.

Catchment to sea connection: Impacts of terrestrial run-off on benthic ecosystems in American Samoa.

Variation in water quality can directly affect the composition of benthic assemblages on coral reefs. Yet, few studies have directly quantified nutrient and suspended particulate matter (SPM) to examine their potential impacts on benthic community structure, especially around high oceanic islands. We assessed the spatio-temporal variation of nutrients and SPM across six sites in American Samoa over a 12-month period and used exploratory path analysis to relate dissolved inorganic nutrients, land use, and natural and anthropogenic drivers to benthic assemblages on adjacent shallow reefs.

Species interactions alter the selection of thermal environment in a coral reef fish.

Increasing ocean temperatures and the resulting poleward range shifts of species has highlighted the importance of a species preferred temperature and thermal range in shaping ecological communities. Understanding the temperatures preferred and avoided by individual species, and how these are influenced by species interactions is critical in predicting the future trajectories of populations, assemblages, and ecosystems. Using an automated shuttlebox system, we established the preferred temperature and upper and lower threshold temperatures (i.

Maximizing regional biodiversity requires a mosaic of protection levels.

Protected areas are the flagship management tools to secure biodiversity from anthropogenic impacts. However, the extent to which adjacent areas with distinct protection levels host different species numbers and compositions remains uncertain. Here, using reef fishes, European alpine plants, and North American birds, we show that the composition of species in adjacent Strictly Protected, Restricted, and Non-Protected areas is highly dissimilar, whereas the number of species is similar, after controlling for environmental conditions, sample size, and rarity.

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.

Regulate or tolerate: Thermal strategy of a coral reef flat resident, the epaulette shark, Hemiscyllium ocellatum.

Highly variable thermal environments, such as coral reef flats, are challenging for marine ectotherms and are thought to invoke the use of behavioural strategies to avoid extreme temperatures and seek out thermal environments close to their preferred temperatures. Common to coral reef flats, the epaulette shark (Hemiscyllium ocellatum) possesses physiological adaptations to hypoxic and hypercapnic conditions, such as those experienced on reef flats, but little is known regarding the thermal strategies used by these sharks. We investigated whether H.

Relative influence of environmental factors and fishing on coral reef fish assemblages.

Understanding whether assemblages of species respond more strongly to bottom-up (availability of trophic resources or habitats) or top-down (predation pressure) processes is important for effective management of resources and ecosystems. We determined the relative influence of environmental factors and predation by humans in shaping the density, biomass, and species richness of 4 medium-bodied (10-40 cm total length [TL]) coral reef fish groups targeted by fishers (mesopredators, planktivores, grazer and detritivores, and scrapers) and the density of 2 groups not targeted by fishers (invertivores, small fish ≤10 cm TL) in the central Philippines. Boosted regression trees were used to model the response of each fish group to 21 predictor variables: 13 habitat variables, 5 island variables, and 3 fishing variables (no-take marine reserve [NTMR] presence or absence, NTMR size, and NTMR age).

Habitat complexity influences selection of thermal environment in a common coral reef fish.

Coral reef species, like most tropical species, are sensitive to increasing environmental temperatures, with many species already living close to their thermal maxima. Ocean warming and the increasing frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves are challenging the persistence of reef-associated species through both direct physiological effects of elevated water temperatures and the degradation and loss of habitat structure following disturbance. Understanding the relative importance of habitat degradation and ocean warming in shaping species distributions is critical in predicting the likely biological effects of global warming.

Contrasting size and fate of juvenile crown-of-thorns starfish linked to ontogenetic diet shifts.

Population dynamics of organisms are shaped by the variation in phenotypic traits, often expressed even among individuals from the same cohort. For example, individual variation in the timing of ontogenetic shifts in diet and/or habitat greatly influences subsequent growth and survival of some organisms, with critical effects on population dynamics. Few studies of natural systems have, however, demonstrated that marked phenotypic variation in growth rates or body size among individuals within a modelled cohort is linked to dietary shifts and food availability.