Among-site variability in the stochastic dynamics of East African coral reefs

Allen, Katherine A ORCID: 0000-0003-3270-5817, Bruno, John F, Chong, Fiona, Clancy, Damian, McClanahan, Tim R, Spencer, Matthew and Zychaluk, Kamila (2017) Among-site variability in the stochastic dynamics of East African coral reefs. PEERJ, 5 (5). e3290-.

This is the latest version of this item.

Text
Among-site variability in the stochastic dynamics of East African coral reefs.pdf - Published version
Download (8MB)

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3290

Abstract

Coral reefs are dynamic systems whose composition is highly influenced by unpredictable biotic and abiotic factors. Understanding the spatial scale at which long-term predictions of reef composition can be made will be crucial for guiding conservation efforts. Using a 22-year time series of benthic composition data from 20 reefs on the Kenyan and Tanzanian coast, we developed Bayesian vector autoregressive state-space models for reef dynamics, incorporating among-site variability, and quantified their long-term behaviour. We estimated that if there were no among-site variability, the total long-term variability would be approximately one-third of its current value. Thus, our results showed that among-site variability contributes more to long-term variability in reef composition than does temporal variability. Individual sites were more predictable than previously thought, and predictions based on current snapshots are informative about long-term properties. Our approach allowed us to identify a subset of possible climate refugia sites with high conservation value, where the long-term probability of coral cover ≤0.1 (as a proportion of benthic cover of hard substrate) was very low. Analytical results show that this probability is most strongly influenced by among-site variability and by interactions among benthic components within sites. These findings suggest that conservation initiatives might be successful at the site scale as well as the regional scale.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	97 pages, 49 figures
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Vector autoregressive model, State-space model, Stochastic dynamics, Community composition, Spatial variability, Temporal variability, Coral reef, Bayesian statistics
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	17 Aug 2018 14:25
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 01:28
DOI:	10.7717/peerj.3290
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3025147