ArticleScientific reports2021
The ecological importance of habitat complexity to the Caribbean coral reef herbivore Diadema antillarum: three lines of evidence.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Physiological and Epigenetic Responses of the Long-Spined Sea UrchinEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Factors constraining natural recovery ofPeerJ · 2025Article
- Tandem reef restoration using corals and sea urchins: Building complex habitat for herbivores.PloS one · 2025Article
- Impacts of hurricanes and disease on Diadema antillarum in shallow water reef and mangrove locations in St John, USVI.PloS one · 2024Article
- The Epibiotic Microbiota of Wild Caribbean Sea Urchin Spines Is Species Specific.Microorganisms · 2023Article
- The relative influence of sea surface temperature anomalies on the benthic composition of an Indo-Pacific and Caribbean coral reef over the last decade.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When Caribbean long-spined sea urchins, Diadema antillarum, are stable at high population densities, their grazing facilitates scleractinian coral dominance. Today, populations remain suppressed after a mass mortality in 1983-1984 caused a loss of their ecosystem functions, and led to widespread declines in ecosystem health. This study provides three lines of evidence to support the assertion that a lack of habitat complexity on Caribbean coral reefs contributes to their recovery failure. Firstly, we extracted fractal dimension (D) measurements, used as a proxy for habitat complexity, from 3D models to demonstrate that urchins preferentially inhabit areas of above average complexity at ecologically relevant spatial scales. Secondly, controlled behaviour experiments showed that an energetically expensive predator avoidance behaviour is reduced by 52% in complex habitats, potentially enabling increased resource allocation to reproduction. Thirdly, we deployed a network of simple and cost-effective artificial structures on a heavily degraded reef system in Honduras. Over a 24-month period the adult D. antillarum population around the artificial reefs increased by 320% from 0.05 ± 0.01 to 0.21 ± 0.04 m
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