Abstract

Slattery & Lesser (2015; Mar Ecol Prog Ser 527:275-279) offer a Comment on our review of the literature for evidence of bottom-up control of sponge communities on Caribbean reefs. We briefly address the criticisms presented in the Comment and reiterate the lack of evi- dence for food limitation, including inter-oceanic comparisons of Caribbean reefs with Indo- Pacific oligotrophic reefs, where sponge communities show strong evidence of food limitation, and past and recent evidence for the importance of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in sponge nutri- tion. We did not claim that 'predation is the primary process that determines the growth, biomass and biodiversity of sponges on Caribbean coral reefs,' but we identified 3 depth-related factors that influence sponge community structure on Caribbean reefs: turbulence, spatial competition and predation. We agree that multifactorial manipulative experiments are the best way to address the interaction between top-down and bottom-up processes in this system; indeed, one such experiment has been performed, with an outcome that does not support bottom-up effects.

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