Exploring coral reef communities in Puerto Rico using Bayesian networks.

ABSTRACT: Most coral reef studies focus on scleractinian (stony) corals to indicate reef condition, but there are other prominent assemblages that play a role in ecosystem structure and function. In Puerto Rico these include fish, gorgonians, and sponges. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted unique surveys of coral reef communities across the southern coast of Puerto Rico that included simultaneous measurement of all four assemblages. Evaluating the results from a community perspective demands endpoints for all four assemblages, so patterns of community structure were explored by probabilistic clustering of measured variables with Bayesian networks. Most variables were found to have stronger associations within than between taxa, but unsupervised structure learning identified three cro

SUBMITTER: Carriger JF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11457097 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature