Researchers studied coral reef fish communities across 35 locations in the Pacific Ocean and discovered that isolated reefs have unusually high ratios of predators to prey fish, the opposite of what happens in most ecosystems where predators disappear first from remote areas. Researchers analyzed published species lists from 35 major coral reef fish communities across the Pacific Ocean, classified 1,350 species as either top predators or prey based on diet, and developed a mathematical model incorporating larval dispersal duration to predict colonization patterns. Species-poor communities from isolated islands have three times as many predator species per prey species as near-shore communities. Predator species richness remains relatively stable across habitats while prey species richness declines rapidly with increasing isolation. Predator fish larvae spend 28% longer in the dispersive stage than prey fish larvae (38.1 vs 28.3 days on average). The predator-prey ratio varies among islands by a factor of 3, ranging from 0.34 to 1.1 predator species per prey species. The research challenges fundamental assumptions about how ecosystems collapse and suggests that coral reef predators may be more resilient to habitat fragmentation than previously thought, which could inform marine conservation strategies and our understanding of how species composition changes across ocean scales.
Citation
Stier, Adrian C.; Hein, Andrew M.; Parravicini, Valeriano; Kulbicki, Michel (2014). Larval dispersal drives trophic structure across Pacific coral reefs. Nature Communications.
This paper is Open Access.
Cite this article
Stier et al. (2014). Isolated Coral Reefs Can Have High Predator-to-Prey Ratios. Ocean Recoveries Lab. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms6575
