Synchronous biological feedbacks in parrotfishes associated with pantropical coral bleaching

Biological feedbacks generated through patterns of disturbance are vital for sustaining ecosystem states. Recent ocean warming and thermal anomalies have caused pantropical episodes of coral bleaching, which has led to widespread coral mortality and a range of subsequent effects on coral reef communities. Although the response of many reef‐associated fishes to major disturbance events on coral reefs is negative (e.g., reduced abundance and condition), parrotfishes show strong feedbacks after disturbance to living reef structure manifesting as increases in abundance. However, the mechanisms underlying this response are poorly understood. Using biochronological reconstructions of annual otolith (ear stone) growth from two ocean basins, we tested whether parrotfish growth was enhanced following bleaching‐related coral mortality, thus providing an organismal mechanism for demographic changes in populations. Both major feeding guilds of parrotfishes (scrapers and excavators) exhibited enhanced growth of individuals after bleaching that was decoupled from expected thermal performance, a pattern that was not evident in other reef fish taxa from the same environment. These results provide evidence for a more nuanced ecological feedback system—one where disturbance plays a key role in mediating parrotfish–benthos interactions. By influencing the biology of assemblages, disturbance can thereby stimulate change in parrotfish grazing intensity and ultimately reef geomorphology over time. This feedback cycle operated historically at within‐reef scales; however, our results demonstrate that the scale, magnitude, and severity of recent thermal events are entraining the biological responses of disparate communities to respond in synchrony. This may fundamentally alter feedbacks in the relationships between parrotfishes and reef systems.     

Dietary generalism accelerates arrival and persistence of coral‐reef fishes in their novel ranges under climate change

Climate change is redistributing marine and terrestrial species globally. Life‐history traits mediate the ability of species to cope with novel environmental conditions, and can be used to gauge the potential redistribution of taxa facing the challenges of a changing climate. However, it is unclear whether the same traits are important across different stages of range shifts (arrival, population increase, persistence). To test which life‐history traits most mediate the process of range extension, we used a 16‐year dataset of 35 range‐extending coral‐reef fish species and quantified the importance of various traits on the arrival time (earliness) and degree of persistence (prevalence and patchiness) at higher latitudes. We show that traits predisposing species to shift their range more rapidly (large body size, broad latitudinal range, long dispersal duration) did not drive the early stages of redistribution. Instead, we found that as diet breadth increased, the initial arrival and establishment (prevalence and patchiness) of climate migrant species in temperate locations occurred earlier. While the initial incursion of range‐shifting species depends on traits associated with dispersal potential, subsequent establishment hinges more on a species’ ability to exploit novel food resources locally. These results highlight that generalist species that can best adapt to novel food sources might be most successful in a future ocean.     

Human exploitation shapes productivity–biomass relationships on coral reefs

Coral reef fisheries support the livelihoods of millions of people in tropical countries, despite large‐scale depletion of fish biomass. While human adaptability can help to explain the resistance of fisheries to biomass depletion, compensatory ecological mechanisms may also be involved. If this is the case, high productivity should coexist with low biomass under relatively high exploitation. Here we integrate large spatial scale empirical data analysis and a theory‐driven modelling approach to unveil the effects of human exploitation on reef fish productivity–biomass relationships. We show that differences in how productivity and biomass respond to overexploitation can decouple their relationship. As size‐selective exploitation depletes fish biomass, it triggers increased production per unit biomass, averting immediate productivity collapse in both the modelling and the empirical systems. This ‘buffering productivity’ exposes the danger of assuming resource production–biomass equivalence, but may help to explain why some biomass‐depleted fish assemblages still provide ecosystem goods under continued global fishing exploitation.     

Protist diversity and function in the dark ocean – Challenging the paradigms of deep-sea ecology with special emphasis on foraminiferans and naked protists

The dark ocean and the underlying deep seafloor together represent the largest environment on this planet, comprising about 80% of the oceanic volume and covering more than two-thirds of the Earth's surface, as well as hosting a major part of the total biosphere. Emerging evidence suggests that these vast pelagic and benthic habitats play a major role in ocean biogeochemistry and represent an “untapped reservoir” of high genetic and metabolic microbial diversity. Due to its huge volume, the water column of the dark ocean is the largest reservoir of organic carbon in the biosphere and likely plays a major role in the global carbon budget. The dark ocean and the seafloor beneath it are also home to a largely enigmatic food web comprising little-known and sometimes spectacular organisms, mainly prokaryotes and protists. This review considers the globally important role of pelagic and benthic protists across all protistan size classes in the deep-sea realm, with a focus on their taxonomy, diversity, and physiological properties, including their role in deep microbial food webs. We argue that, given the important contribution that protists must make to deep-sea biodiversity and ecosystem processes, they should not be overlooked in biological studies of the deep ocean.     

中国造礁石珊瑚分类厘定

造礁石珊瑚是珊瑚礁框架建造者, 具有维持珊瑚礁生态系统功能和稳定性的重要作用, 其分类对于造礁石珊瑚和珊瑚礁的研究与保护至关重要。目前, 随着分子系统学的不断发展, 造礁石珊瑚的分类体系发生改变, 伴随着出现大量同物异名。近年来也出现许多无中文学名的中国造礁石珊瑚新记录种, 这些都给物种认定和命名带来困难, 阻碍了中国造礁石珊瑚的研究与保护工作。为此, 本文收集了中国造礁石珊瑚物种记录文献资料, 采用最新的造礁石珊瑚分类体系, 确认同物异名, 形成中国造礁石珊瑚物种名录, 并对中国造礁石珊瑚物种的中文名进行统一的规范和命名。结果表明, 中国共有造礁石珊瑚2个类群16科77属445种。与《中国动物志·腔肠动物门·珊瑚虫纲·石珊瑚目·造礁石珊瑚》相比, 科级分类阶元新增7个科, 变更5个科; 属级分类阶元新增26属, 变更1属, 合并3属; 种级分类阶元新增291种, 变更13种, 合并20种, 新命名305个物种的中文名。并且筛选出187个同物异名。此外, 由于造礁石珊瑚分类体系现仍有部分争议, 文章也进行了讨论说明。     

Increased diversity and concordant shifts in community structure of coral‐associated Symbiodiniaceae and bacteria subjected to chronic human disturbance

Both coral‐associated bacteria and endosymbiotic algae (Symbiodiniaceae spp.) are vitally important for the biological function of corals. Yet little is known about their co‐occurrence within corals, how their diversity varies across coral species, or how they are impacted by anthropogenic disturbances. Here, we sampled coral colonies (n = 472) from seven species, encompassing a range of life history traits, across a gradient of chronic human disturbance (n = 11 sites on Kiritimati [Christmas] atoll) in the central equatorial Pacific, and quantified the sequence assemblages and community structure of their associated Symbiodiniaceae and bacterial communities. Although Symbiodiniaceae alpha diversity did not vary with chronic human disturbance, disturbance was consistently associated with higher bacterial Shannon diversity and richness, with bacterial richness by sample almost doubling from sites with low to very high disturbance. Chronic disturbance was also associated with altered microbial beta diversity for Symbiodiniaceae and bacteria, including changes in community structure for both and increased variation (dispersion) of the Symbiodiniaceae communities. We also found concordance between Symbiodiniaceae and bacterial community structure, when all corals were considered together, and individually for two massive species, Hydnophora microconos and Porites lobata, implying that symbionts and bacteria respond similarly to human disturbance in these species. Finally, we found that the dominant Symbiodiniaceae ancestral lineage in a coral colony was associated with differential abundances of several distinct bacterial taxa. These results suggest that increased beta diversity of Symbiodiniaceae and bacterial communities may be a reliable indicator of stress in the coral microbiome, and that there may be concordant responses to chronic disturbance between these communities at the whole‐ecosystem scale.     

Travel with your kin ship! Insights from genetic sibship among settlers of a coral damselfish

Coral reef fish larvae are tiny, exceedingly numerous, and hard to track. They are also highly capable, equipped with swimming and sensory abilities that may influence their dispersal trajectories. Despite the importance of larval input to the dynamics of a population, we remain reliant on indirect insights to the processes influencing larval behavior and transport. Here, we used genetic data (300 independent single nucleotide polymorphisms) derived from a light trap sample of a single recruitment event of Dascyllus abudafur in the Red Sea (N = 168 settlers). We analyzed the genetic composition of the larvae and assessed whether kinship among these was significantly different from random as evidence for cohesive dispersal during the larval phase. We used Monte Carlo simulations of similar‐sized recruitment cohorts to compare the expected kinship composition relative to our empirical data. The high number of siblings within the empirical cohort strongly suggests cohesive dispersal among larvae. This work highlights the utility of kinship analysis as a means of inferring dynamics during the pelagic larval phase.     

At Palmyra Atoll,the fish-community environmental DNA signal changes across habitats but not with tides

At Palmyra Atoll, the environmental DNA (eDNA) signal on tidal sand flats was associated with fish biomass density and captured 98%–100% of the expected species diversity there. Although eDNA spilled over across habitats, species associated with reef habitat contributed more eDNA to reef sites than to sand-flat sites, and species associated with sand-flat habitat contributed more eDNA to sand-flat sites than to reef sites. Tides did not disrupt the sand-flat habitat signal. At least 25 samples give a coverage >97.5% at this diverse, tropical, marine system.     

Small invertebrate consumers produce consistent size spectra across reef habitats and climatic zones

Changes in invertebrate body size-distributions that follow loss of habitat-forming species can potentially affect a range of ecological processes, including predation and competition. In the marine environment, small crustaceans and other mobile invertebrates (‘epifauna') represent a basal component in reef food webs, with a pivotal secondary production role that is strongly influenced by their body size-distribution. Ongoing degradation of reef habitats that affect invertebrate size-distributions, particularly transformation of coral and kelp habitat to algal turf, may thus fundamentally affect secondary production. Here we explored variation in size spectra of shallow epifaunal assemblages (i.e. the slope and intercept of the linear relationship between log abundance and body size at the assemblage level) across 21 reef microhabitats distributed along an extensive eastern Australian climatic gradient from the tropical northern Great Barrier Reef to cool temperate Tasmania. When aggregated across microhabitats at the site scale, invertebrate body size spectra (0.125–8 mm range) were consistently log-linear (R² ranging 0.87–0.98). Size spectra differed between, but not within, major groups of microhabitats, and exhibited little variability between tropical and temperate biomes. Nevertheless, size spectra showed significant tropical/temperate differences in slopes for epifauna sampled on macroalgal habitats, and in elevation for soft coral and sponge habitats. Our results reveal epifaunal size spectra to be a highly predictable macro-ecological feature. Given that variation in epifaunal size spectra among groups of microhabitats was greater than variation between tropical and temperate biomes, we postulate that ocean warming will not greatly alter epifaunal size spectra directly. However, transformation of tropical coral and temperate macroalgal habitats to algal turfs due to warming will alter reef food web dynamics through redistribution of the size of prey available to fishes.