Detailed Food Web Networks of Three Greater Antillean Coral Reef Systems: The Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica

Peter D Roopnarine,Rachel Hertog

doi:10.7167/2013/857470

Peter D Roopnarine, Rachel Hertog

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.7167/2013/857470

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Abstract

Food webs represent one of the most complex aspects of community biotic interactions. Complex food webs are represented as networks of interspecific interactions, where nodes represent species or groups of species, and links are predator-prey interactions. This paper presents reconstructions of coral reef food webs in three Greater Antillean regions of the Caribbean: the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica. Though not taxonomically comprehensive, each food web nevertheless comprises producers and consumers, single-celled and multicellular organisms, and species foraging on reefs and adjacent seagrass beds. Species are grouped into trophic guilds if their prey and predator links are indistinguishable. The data list guilds, taxonomic composition, prey guilds/species, and predators. Primary producer and invertebrate richness are regionally uniform, but vertebrate richness varies on the basis of more detailed occurrence data. Each region comprises 169 primary producers, 513 protistan and invertebrate consumer species, and 159, 178, and 170 vertebrate species in the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica, respectively. Caribbean coral reefs are among the world's most endangered by anthropogenic activities. The datasets presented here will facilitate comparisons of historical and regional variation, the assessment of impacts of species loss and invasion, and the application of food webs to ecosystem analyses.

Highlights

Coral reef communities of the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea have a long history of anthropogenic disturbance, driven by the exploitation for food of both vertebrate and invertebrate species [1, 2]
Coral bleaching, storm effects, coral disease, coastal development, pollution, invasive species, and a reduction of herbivorous control of algae in spatial competition with coral [3] have resulted in dramatic declines of diversity and abundance on reefs throughout the region [4–6]. e ongoing and predicted increases of seawater temperature and acidi cation as consequences of anthropogenic global warming make coral reefs among the most endangered ocean ecosystems, and Greater Antillean reefs may be vulnerable because of their past and recent histories of perturbation [7]
Network representation of communities can be used to discover interactions that would be lost as a consequence of extinction, and chains or pathways that would be disrupted [10]. ey may be used to infer possible secondary extinctions as a result of lost or disrupted paths [11]. e simplest such inference, topological secondary extinction [12], predicts the Dataset Papers in Ecology serve as useful sources of ecological data within each region and facilitate comparisons across that area of the Greater Antilles and beyond as the number of similar regional datasets increases. e datasets will be useful tools for assessing the robustness of these ecologically and economically important communities, and the potential outcomes of various types of disturbance and conservation measures

Summary

Dataset Paper

Detailed Food Web Networks of Three Greater Antillean Coral Reef Systems: The Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica. Complex food webs are represented as networks of interspeci c interactions, where nodes represent species or groups of species, and links are predator-prey interactions. Is paper presents reconstructions of coral reef food webs in three Greater Antillean regions of the Caribbean: the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica. Ough not taxonomically comprehensive, each food web comprises producers and consumers, single-celled and multicellular organisms, and species foraging on reefs and adjacent seagrass beds. Primary producer and invertebrate richness are regionally uniform, but vertebrate richness varies on the basis of more detailed occurrence data. Each region comprises 169 primary producers, 513 protistan and invertebrate consumer species, and 159, 178, and 170 vertebrate species in the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica, respectively. Caribbean coral reefs are among the world’s most endangered by anthropogenic activities. e datasets presented here will facilitate comparisons of historical and regional variation, the assessment of impacts of species loss and invasion, and the application of food webs to ecosystem analyses

Introduction

Methodology

Findings

Number of species