Multi-decadal stability of fish productivity despite increasing coral reef degradation

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Abstract [Related publication]:

1. Under current trajectories, it is unlikely that the coral reefs of the future will resemble those of the past. As multiple stressors, such as climate change and coastal development, continue to impact coral reefs, understanding the changes in ecosystem functioning is imperative to protect key ecosystem services.
2. We used a 26-year dataset of benthic reef fishes (including cryptobenthic fishes) to identify multi-decadal trends in fish biomass production on a degraded coral reef. We converted fish abundances into estimates of community productivity to track the long-term trend of fish biomass production through time.
3. Following the first mass coral bleaching event in 1998, the abundance, standing biomass, and productivity of fish communities remained remarkably constant through time, despite the occurrence of multiple stressors, including extreme sedimentation, cyclones, and mass coral bleaching events. Species richness declined following the 1998 bleaching event, but rebounded to pre-bleaching levels and also remained relatively stable.
4. Although the species composition of the communities changed over time, these new community configurations still maintain a steady level of fish biomass production. While these highly dynamic and increasingly degraded systems can still provide some critical ecosystem functions, it is unclear whether these patterns will remain stable over future decades.

This data collection consists of:

1. doi_10.5061_dryad.dr7sqvb36__v3.zip containing 3 CSV files and a README.md

• Community_data.csv - summary of the productivity, biomass, abundance, and species richness of each station per year.
• Crypto_data.csv - summary of the productivity, biomass, abundance, and species richness for each group (i.e. cryptobenthic, pomacentrid, and non-cryptobenthic) for each station per year.
• Community_multi.csv - matrix of species based on abundances, weighted by the total number of stations per year indicating the pre bleaching (before 1999, inclusive) and post bleaching (after 1999)

This dataset was originally published on Dryad and should be cited as: Yan, Helen; Bellwood, David (2023), Multi-decadal stability of fish productivity despite increasing coral reef degradation, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dr7sqvb36

2. AnalysisClean.R - this script runs through the analysis for the paper. The README.md above (available via Dryad) lists sessionInfo, attached packages, and packages loaded via a namespace etc.

This dataset was original published on Zenodo and should be cited as: Yan, Helen, & Bellwood, David. (2023). Multi-decadal stability of fish productivity despite increasing coral reef degradation. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7700441

Software/equipment used to create/collect the data: Microsoft Excel

Software/equipment used to manipulate/analyse the data: R version 4.1.9 on macOS Catalina 10.15.7

Notes