Abstract
The availability of habitat structure across spatial scales can determine ecological organization and resilience. However, anthropogenic disturbances are altering the abundance and composition of habitat-forming organisms. How such shifts in the composition of these organisms alter the physical structure of habitats across ecologically important scales remains unclear. At a time of unprecedented coral loss and homogenization of coral assemblages globally, we investigate the inherent structural complexity of taxonomically distinct reefs, across five ecologically relevant scales of measurement (4–64 cm). We show that structural complexity was influenced by coral species composition, and was not a simple function of coral cover on the studied reefs. However, inter-habitat variation in structural complexity changed with scale. Importantly, the scales at which habitat structure was available also varied among habitats. Complexity at the smallest, most vulnerable scale (4 cm) varied the most among habitats, which could have inferences for as much as half of all reef fishes which are small-bodied and refuge dependent for much of their lives. As disturbances continue and species shifts persist, the future of these ecosystems may rely on a greater concern for the composition of habitat-building species and prioritization of particular configurations for protection of maximal cross-scale habitat structural complexity.
Highlights
The physical structure of habitats is integral to the organization, function, and resilience of ecosystems[1,2,3], and the provision of ecosystem goods and services
The habitat structural complexity of forests varies with tree species composition[12, 13]; wetland habitats vary with the composition of forbs, grasses and rushes[14]; and the structure of subtidal temperate reefs is dependent on the species composition of canopy-forming seaweeds[15]
This study aimed to investigate the influence of coral species composition on cross-scale patterns of habitat structural complexity, at spatial scales of measurement relevant to fish refuge selection
Summary
The physical structure of habitats is integral to the organization, function, and resilience of ecosystems[1,2,3], and the provision of ecosystem goods and services. The structural complexity of habitats is typically created by communities of living organisms (i.e. habitat-forming organisms such as trees, canopy-forming seaweeds, oysters, wetland grasses, and corals), as well as abiotic features such as the underlying geomorphology, and/or three-dimensional structures of dead organisms[6, 11] Both the abundance and species composition of habitat-forming organisms can have a strong influence on the structural complexity of habitats. An understanding of the inherent variation in cross-scale structural complexity of coral reefs is currently lacking To this end, this study aimed to investigate the influence of coral species composition on cross-scale patterns of habitat structural complexity, at spatial scales of measurement relevant to fish refuge selection We assessed i) the cross-scale structural complexity of four coral habitats with distinct species configurations and degraded (
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