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DOI10.1002/ecs2.4791
Herbivory through the lens of ecological processes across Pacific coral reefs
发表日期2024
ISSN2150-8925
起始页码15
结束页码2
卷号15期号:2
英文摘要Coral reefs are in global decline primarily due to climate change. Herbivory is often viewed as key to maintaining coral-dominated reefs, and herbivore management is gaining traction as a possible strategy for promoting reef resilience. The functional impact of herbivorous fishes has typically been inferred from total biomass, but robust estimates of ecological processes are needed to better inform management targets. Here, we provide a framework to calculate rates of herbivory across Pacific reefs. We synthesized available observations of foraging metrics in relation to fish body size and found considerable variation, even among closely related species. We then applied these allometric functions to survey data and calculated rates of herbivory for acanthurids and scarines, which make up the vast majority of herbivorous fish biomass in the Pacific. Estimated rates of algal consumption, area scraped, and bioerosion varied across islands, with noticeable differences that may align with the relative influence of human population density among underlying herbivore functional groups. We found no evidence of compensatory relationships among herbivore processes whereby decreasing rates in one type of herbivory is offset by increasing rates in another. We observed nonlinear, positive relationships between fish biomass and rates of herbivory. Yet, for a given biomass, the corresponding rates of herbivory varied among regions, and we observed instances where islands with the greatest biomass did not also have the highest rates of herbivory. Islands with the largest size classes of herbivores did not consistently exhibit greater rates of herbivory, and we did not find a clear, consistent pattern between the number of fish species and corresponding rates of herbivore processes. Cropping Acanthurus spp. provided the greatest proportion of algal consumption at every island, yet no single species accounted for the majority of this process, whereas we identified parrotfish species that provided >75% of scraping or bioerosion at certain islands. Our results emphasize the importance of considering the species and size composition of herbivore assemblages when estimating processes, rather than relying on total biomass alone. Lastly, we highlight gaps in foraging observations and additional work needed to further broaden our ability to quantify the ecological processes of herbivores.
英文关键词bioerosion; coral reef fishes; ecological process; ecosystem function; grazing; herbivory; tropical Pacific
语种英语
WOS研究方向Environmental Sciences & Ecology
WOS类目Ecology
WOS记录号WOS:001177132500001
来源期刊ECOSPHERE
文献类型期刊论文
条目标识符http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/291509
作者单位National Oceanic Atmospheric Admin (NOAA) - USA; University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara; University of Victoria; James Cook University
推荐引用方式
GB/T 7714
. Herbivory through the lens of ecological processes across Pacific coral reefs[J],2024,15(2).
APA (2024).Herbivory through the lens of ecological processes across Pacific coral reefs.ECOSPHERE,15(2).
MLA "Herbivory through the lens of ecological processes across Pacific coral reefs".ECOSPHERE 15.2(2024).
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