ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2016
Natural bounds on herbivorous coral reef fishes.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Influence of upwelling on coral reef benthic communities: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Local human impacts interact with geography to drive benthic community depth zonation on contemporary coral reefs.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Review
- Patterns and implications of spatial covariation in herbivore functions on resilience of coral reefs.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Biogeographical diet variation within and between the rabbitfishesEcology and evolution · 2024Article
- The effect of reef morphology on coral recruitment at multiple spatial scales.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Local human impacts disrupt depth-dependent zonation of tropical reef fish communities.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Fish assemblage structure, diversity and controls on reefs of South Kona, Hawai'i Island.PloS one · 2023Article
- Quantifying production rates and size fractions of parrotfish-derived sediment: A key functional role on Maldivian coral reefs.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- First insights into the impacts of benthic cyanobacterial mats on fish herbivory functions on a nearshore coral reef.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Disentangling drivers of the abundance of coral reef fishes in the Western Indian Ocean.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Parsing human and biophysical drivers of coral reef regimes.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Combining fish and benthic communities into multiple regimes reveals complex reef dynamics.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Environmental conditions and herbivore biomass determine coral reef benthic community composition: implications for quantitative baselines.Coral reefs (Online) · 2018Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans are an increasingly dominant driver of Earth's biological communities, but differentiating human impacts from natural drivers of ecosystem state is crucial. Herbivorous fish play a key role in maintaining coral dominance on coral reefs, and are widely affected by human activities, principally fishing. We assess the relative importance of human and biophysical (habitat and oceanographic) drivers on the biomass of five herbivorous functional groups among 33 islands in the central and western Pacific Ocean. Human impacts were clear for some, but not all, herbivore groups. Biomass of browsers, large excavators, and of all herbivores combined declined rapidly with increasing human population density, whereas grazers, scrapers, and detritivores displayed no relationship. Sea-surface temperature had significant but opposing effects on the biomass of detritivores (positive) and browsers (negative). Similarly, the biomass of scrapers, grazers, and detritivores correlated with habitat structural complexity; however, relationships were group specific. Finally, the biomass of browsers and large excavators was related to island geomorphology, both peaking on low-lying islands and atolls. The substantial variability in herbivore populations explained by natural biophysical drivers highlights the need for locally appropriate management targets on coral reefs.
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