A community and functional comparison of coral and reef fish assemblages between four decades of coastal urbanisation and thermal stress.

ABSTRACT: Urbanized coral reefs experience anthropogenic disturbances caused by coastal development, pollution, and nutrient runoff, resulting in turbid, marginal conditions in which only certain species can persist. Mortality effects are exacerbated by increasingly regular thermal stress events, leading to shifts towards novel communities dominated by habitat generalists and species with low structural complexity.There is limited data on the turnover processes that occur due to this convergence of anthropogenic stressors, and how novel urban ecosystems are structured both at the community and functional levels. As such, it is unclear how they will respond to future disturbance events.Here, we examine the patterns of coral reef community change and determine whether ecosystem functions provided by s

SUBMITTER: Cook KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8939291 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature