Abstract
Landscape-scale attributes of patch size, spatial isolation, and topographic complexity are known to influence diversity and abundance in terrestrial and marine systems, but remain collectively untested for reef-building corals. To investigate the relationship between the coral assemblage and seascape variation in reef habitats, we took advantage of the distinct boundaries, spatial configurations, and topographic complexities among artificial reef patches to overcome the difficulties of manipulating natural reefs. Reef size (m2) was found to be the foremost predictor of coral richness in accordance with species-area relationship predictions. Larger reefs were also found to support significantly higher colony densities, enabling us to reject the null hypothesis of random placement (a sampling artifact) in favor of target area predictions that suggest greater rates of immigration on larger reefs. Unlike the pattern previously documented for reef fishes, topographic complexity was not a significant predictor of any coral assemblage response variable, despite the range of complexity values sampled. Lastly, coral colony density was best explained by both increasing reef size and decreasing reef spatial isolation, a pattern found exclusively among brooding species with shorter larval dispersal distances. We conclude that seascape attributes of reef size and spatial configuration within the seascape can influence the species richness and abundance of the coral community at relatively small spatial scales (<1 km). Specifically, we demonstrate how patterns in the coral communities that have naturally established on these manipulated reefs agree with the target area and island biogeography mechanisms to drive species-area relationships in reef-building corals. Based on the patterns documented in artificial reefs, habitat degradation that results in smaller, more isolated natural reefs may compromise coral diversity.
References
Acosta CA, Robertson DN (2002) Diversity in coral reef fish communities: The effects of habitat patchiness revisited. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 227:87–96
Alvarez-Filip L, Dulvy NK, Gill JA, Côté IM, Watkinson AR (2009) Flattening of Caribbean coral reefs: Region-wide declines in architectural complexity. Proc R Soc Biol Sci Ser B 276:3019–3025
Anderson MJ (1999) Effects of patch size on colonization in estuaries: revisiting the species-area relationship. Oecologia 118:87–98
Arrhenius O (1921) Species and area. J Ecol 9:95–99
Bellwood DR, Hughes TP, Folke C, Nystrom M (2004) Confronting the coral reef crisis. Nature 429:827–833
Belmaker J, Shashar N, Ziv Y (2005) Effects of small-scale isolation and predation on fish diversity on experimental reefs. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 289:273–283
Bender DJ, Contreras TA, Fahrig L (1998) Habitat loss and population decline: A meta-analysis of the patch size effect. Ecology 79:517–533
Bohnsack JA, Harper DE, McClellan DB, Hulsbeck M (1994) Effects of reef size on colonization and assemblage structure of fishes at artificial reefs off southeastern Florida, USA. Bull Mar Sci 55(2):796–823
Bonin MC, Almany GR, Jones GP (2011) Contrasting effects of habitat loss and fragmentation on coral-associated reef fishes. Ecology 92:1503–1512
Brock J, Palaseanu-Lovejoy M, Wright C, Nayegandhi A (2008) Patch-reef morphology as a proxy for Holocene sea-level variability, northern Florida Keys, USA. Coral Reefs 27:555–568
Caley MJ, St John J (1996) Refuge availability structures assemblages of tropical reef fishes. J Anim Ecol 65:414–428
Clarke RD (1988) Chance and order in determining fish-species composition on small coral patches. J Exp Mar Biol Ecol 115:197–212
Coleman BD, Mares MA, Willig MR, Hsieh YH (1982) Randomness, area, and species richness. Ecology 63:1121–1133
Connor EF, McCoy ED (1979) The statistics and biology of the species-area relationship. Am Nat 113:791–833
Cornell HV, Karlson RH (2000) Coral species richness: Ecological versus biogeographical influences. Coral Reefs 19:37–49
Drew CA, Eggleston DB (2006) Currents, landscape structure, and recruitment success along a passive–active dispersal gradient. Landsc Ecol 21:917–931
Edmunds PJ, Bruno JF, Carlon DB (2004) Effects of depth and microhabitat on growth and survivorship of juvenile corals in the Florida Keys. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 278:115–124
Eggleston DB, Etherington LL, Elis WE (1998) Testing landscape ecological principles in the marine environment: scale-and habitat-dependent recruitment of decapod crustaceans. J Exp Mar Biol Ecol 223:111–132
Gilpin ME, Diamond JM (1976) Calculation of immigration and extinction curves from the species-area-distance relation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 73:4130–4134
Gladfelter WB, Ogden JC, Gladfelter EH (1980) Similarity and diversity among coral reef fish communities: a comparison between tropical western Atlantic (Virgin Islands) and tropical central Pacific (Marshall Islands) patch reefs. Ecology 61:1156–1168
Gratwicke B, Speight M (2005) The relationship between fish species richness, abundance and habitat complexity in a range of shallow tropical marine habitats. J Fish Biol 66:650–667
Hovel KA, Lipcius RN (2001) Habitat fragmentation in a seagrass landscape: Patch size and complexity control blue crab survival. Ecology 82:1814–1829
Hudson JH, Schittone J, Anderson J, Franklin EC, Stratton A (2008) Coral reef restoration monitoring report: Monitoring events 2004–2007 Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Monroe County, Florida. Marine Sanctuaries Conservation Series, NMSP-08-03:1-48
Hughes TP, Baird AH, Bellwood DR, Card M, Connolly SR, Folke C, Grosberg R, Hoegh-Guldberg O, Jackson JBC, Kleypas J, Lough JM, Marshall P, Nystrom M, Palumbi SR, Pandolfi JM, Rosen B, Roughgarden J (2003) Climate change, human impacts, and the resilience of coral reefs. Science 301:929–933
Hughes TP, Graham NAJ, Jackson JBC, Mumby PJ, Steneck RS (2010) Rising to the challenge of sustaining coral reef resilience. Trends Ecol Evol 25:633–642
Huntington BE, Lirman D (in press) Evaluating the accuracy of estimated coral richness across reefs of increasing size. Limnol Oceanogr Methods
Huntington BE, Karnauskas M, Babcock E, Lirman D (2010) Untangling natural seascape variation from marine reserve effects using a landscape approach. PLoS ONE 5:e12327
Jones CG, Lawton JH, Shachak M (1994) Organisms as ecosystem engineers. Oikos 373–386
Kadmon R (1995) Nested species subsets and geographic isolation: a case study. Ecology 76:458–465
Kohler KE, Gill SM (2006) Coral Point Count with Excel extensions (CPCe): A Visual Basic program for the determination of coral and substrate coverage using random point count methodology. Comput Geosci 32:1259–1269
Lomolino MV (1990) The target area hypothesis: the influence of island area on immigration rates of non-volant mammals. Oikos 57:297–300
Luckhurst B, Luckhurst K (1978) Analysis of the influence of substrate variables on coral reef fish communities. Mar Biol 49:317–323
MacArthur RH, Wilson EO (1967) The theory of island biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
McLain DK, Pratt AE (1999) Nestedness of coral reef fish across a set of fringing reefs. Oikos 85:53–67
Mellin C, Huchery C, Caley M, Meekan M, Bradshaw C (2010) Reef size and isolation determine the temporal stability of coral reef fish populations. Ecology 91:3138–3145
Moilanen A, Nieminen M (2002) Simple connectivity measures in spatial ecology. Ecology 83:1131–1145
Neigel JE (2003) Species-area relationships and marine conservation. Ecol Appl 13:S138–S145
Nishikawa A, Katoh M, Sakai K (2003) Larval settlement rates and gene flow of broadcast-spawning (Acropora tenuis) and planula-brooding (Stylophora pistillata) corals. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 256:87–97
Palmer MW, White PS (1994) Scale dependence and the species-area relationship. Am Nat 144:717–740
Pandolfi JM, Jackson JBC, Baron N, Bradbury RH, Guzman HM, Hughes TP, Kappel CV, Micheli F, Ogden JC, Possingham HP, Sala E (2005) Are U.S. coral reefs on the slippery slope to slime? Science 307:1725–1726
Risk MJ (1972) Fish diversity on a coral reef in the Virgin Islands. Atoll Res Bull 153:1–6
Rosenzweig ML (1995) Species diversity in space and time. Cambridge Univ Press, Cambridge, UK
Shima JS, Osenberg CW, St. Mary CM (2008) Quantifying site quality in a heterogeneous landscape: Recruitment of a reef fish. Ecology 89:86–94
Simberloff D (1976) Experimental zoogeography of islands: effects of island size. Ecology 57:629–648
Vermeij MJA (2005) Substrate composition and adult distribution determine recruitment patterns in a Caribbean brooding coral. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 295:123–133
Walsh WJ (1985) Reef fish community dynamics on small artificial reefs: the influence of isolation, habitat structure, and biogeography. Bull Mar Sci 36:357–376
Williams CB (1943) Area and number of species. Nature 152:264–267
Wilson SK, Graham NAJ, Polunin NVC (2007) Appraisal of visual assessments of habitat complexity and benthic composition on coral reefs. Mar Biol 151:1069–1076
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by Biology Editor Dr. Hugh Sweatman.
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Huntington, B.E., Lirman, D. Species-area relationships in coral communities: evaluating mechanisms for a commonly observed pattern. Coral Reefs 31, 929–938 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-012-0917-9
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-012-0917-9