PeerJ | |
Among-site variability in the stochastic dynamics of East African coral reefs | |
article | |
Katherine A. Allen1  John F. Bruno3  Fiona Chong1  Damian Clancy4  Tim R. McClanahan5  Matthew Spencer1  Kamila Żychaluk6  | |
[1] School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool;Institute of Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool;Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics, Heriot-Watt University;Wildlife Conservation Society;Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Liverpool | |
关键词: Vector autoregressive model; State-space model; Stochastic dynamics; Community composition; Spatial variability; Temporal variability; Coral reef; Bayesian statistics; | |
DOI : 10.7717/peerj.3290 | |
学科分类:社会科学、人文和艺术(综合) | |
来源: Inra | |
【 摘 要 】
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.
【 授权许可】
CC BY
【 预 览 】
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RO202307100013997ZK.pdf | 7959KB | download |