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150386 - The shape of success in a turbulent world - wave exposure.pdf (1.26 MB)

The shape of success in a turbulent world: wave exposure filtering of coral reef herbivory

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-21, 08:20 authored by Bejarano, S, Jouffray, J-B, Chollett, I, Allen, R, Roff, G, Alyssa MarshellAlyssa Marshell, Steneck, R, Ferse, SCA, Mumby, PJ

Summary

  1. While environmental filters are well-known factors influencing community assembly, the extent to which these modify species functions, and entire ecosystem processes, is poorly understood.
  2. Focusing on a high-diversity system, we ask whether environmental filtering has ecosystem-wide effects beyond community assembly. We characterise a coral reef herbivorous fish community for swimming performance based on ten functional traits derived from fish morphology. We then investigate whether wave exposure modifies the functional make-up of herbivory, and the absolute and relative feeding frequency of distinct feeding functional groups.
  3. Herbivorous fish species conformed to either laterally compressed or fusiform body plans, which differ in their morphological design to minimise drag. High wave exposure selectively limited the feeding function of the deepest body shapes with highest caudal thrust efficiency, and favoured fusiform bodies irrespective of pectoral fin shape.
  4. Traditionally recognised herbivore feeding functional groups (i.e. grazers–detritivores and scrapers–small excavators) differed in swimming performance, and in their capacity to feed consistently across levels of wave exposure. We therefore emphasise the distinctness of their ecological niche and functional complementarity.
  5. Species within the same feeding functional group also had contrasting responses to wave exposure. We thereby reveal a further ecological dimension of niche partitioning, and reiterate the risk of assuming functional redundancy among species with a common feeding mode.
  6. Contrasting responses of species within feeding functional roles (i.e. response diversity) allowed the preservation of critical trophic functions throughout the gradient (e.g. macroalgal browsing), and likely explained why overall levels of herbivory were robust to filtering. Whether ecosystem functioning will remain robust under the additive effects of environmental stress and human-induced disturbances remains to be tested.

A lay summary is available for this article.

History

Publication title

Functional Ecology

Volume

31

Issue

6

Pagination

1312-1324

ISSN

1365-2435

Department/School

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Place of publication

United Kingdom

Rights statement

© 2017 The Authors. Functional Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Assessment and management of benthic marine ecosystems; Marine biodiversity