ArticlePloS one2017
Cost and time-effective method for multi-scale measures of rugosity, fractal dimension, and vector dispersion from coral reef 3D models.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 23 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Response and Plasticity of a Cleaning Mutualism Following Short Term Reductions in Habitat Availability.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Article
- Morphological Composition Influences Redundancy, Complementarity and Ecological Relevance of Habitat Complexity Metrics in Simulated Coral Communities.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Multiscale structural complexity assessment of coral reefs using underwater photogrammetry.PloS one · 2025Article
- Fate-tracking early coral recruits following bleaching in a remote reef ecosystem.Coral reefs (Online) · 2025Article
- Establishing complexity targets to enhance artificial reef designs.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Let's Print an Ecology in 3D (and 4D).Materials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Variation in farming damselfish behaviour creates a competitive landscape of risk on coral reefs.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Dead but not forgotten: complexity ofPeerJ · 2023Article
- Measuring habitat complexity and spatial heterogeneity in ecology.Ecology letters · 2022Review
- A new index for quantifying the ornamentational complexity of animals with shells.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- 3D assessment of a coral reef at Lalo Atoll reveals varying responses of habitat metrics following a catastrophic hurricane.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The ecological importance of habitat complexity to the Caribbean coral reef herbivore Diadema antillarum: three lines of evidence.Scientific reports · 2021Article
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- Article
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- Automated classification of three-dimensional reconstructions of coral reefs using convolutional neural networks.PloS one · 2020Article
- Growth estimates of Caribbean reef sponges on a shipwreck using 3D photogrammetry.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Aggregating behaviour in invasive Caribbean lionfish is driven by habitat complexity.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We present a method to construct and analyse 3D models of underwater scenes using a single cost-effective camera on a standard laptop with (a) free or low-cost software, (b) no computer programming ability, and (c) minimal man hours for both filming and analysis. This study focuses on four key structural complexity metrics: point-to-point distances, linear rugosity (R), fractal dimension (D), and vector dispersion (1/k). We present the first assessment of accuracy and precision of structure-from-motion (SfM) 3D models from an uncalibrated GoPro™ camera at a small scale (4 m2) and show that they can provide meaningful, ecologically relevant results. Models had root mean square errors of 1.48 cm in X-Y and 1.35 in Z, and accuracies of 86.8% (R), 99.6% (D at scales 30-60 cm), 93.6% (D at scales 1-5 cm), and 86.9 (1/k). Values of R were compared to in-situ chain-and-tape measurements, while values of D and 1/k were compared with ground truths from 3D printed objects modelled underwater. All metrics varied less than 3% between independently rendered models. We thereby improve and rigorously validate a tool for ecologists to non-invasively quantify coral reef structural complexity with a variety of multi-scale metrics.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.