Retention of habitat complexity minimizes disassembly of reef fish communities following disturbance: a large-scale natural experiment.

ABSTRACT: High biodiversity ecosystems are commonly associated with complex habitats. Coral reefs are highly diverse ecosystems, but are under increasing pressure from numerous stressors, many of which reduce live coral cover and habitat complexity with concomitant effects on other organisms such as reef fishes. While previous studies have highlighted the importance of habitat complexity in structuring reef fish communities, they employed gradient or meta-analyses which lacked a controlled experimental design over broad spatial scales to explicitly separate the influence of live coral cover from overall habitat complexity. Here a natural experiment using a long term (20 year), spatially extensive (∼ 115,000 kms(2)) dataset from the Great Barrier Reef revealed the fundamental importance of overall ha

SUBMITTER: Emslie MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4139330 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature