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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Liam LachsORCiD, Alex Ward, Elizabeth Wass, Emeritus Professor Alasdair Edwards, Dr Adriana Humanes SchumannORCiD, Helios Martinez, Dr Eveline van der Steeg, Professor John BythellORCiD, Dr James GuestORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2025 The Authors.Monitoring habitat-forming species, such as scleractinian corals, is crucial for managing ecosystems and biodiversity. Yet for assessing population health, challenges remain in reconciling conventional areal coverage surveys with individual-based demographic techniques. Here, we explore both monitoring approaches to characterize the population dynamics of the reef-building coral, Acropora cf. digitifera, on a West Pacific outer reef using photogrammetry reef mapping data spanning 5 years. Tracking 906 coral colonies showed that those exceeding approximately 10 cm diameter exhibit the fastest planar growth but also suffer excess mortality, possibly owing to increased structural vulnerability to dislodgement by wave energy or to other factors, such as disease or predation, that may be exacerbated by senescence. Area-controlled orthomosaic subsampling paired to integral projection modelling revealed a consistent decline in population density, as recruitment was insufficient to balance losses of larger colonies. Yet, total areal coverage and median colony size increased over the study, suggesting this disequilibrium population is on a recovery trajectory from past disturbance and heavily reliant on sporadic recruitment pulses not detected in our study. We find that conventional areal monitoring and demographic approaches can yield contrasting conclusions about population dynamics. Reconciling these differences for disequilibrium populations requires long-term demographic data over periods long enough to detect infrequent yet critical demographic events such as large post-disturbance recruitment events.
Author(s): Lachs L, Ward A, Beauchamp EA, Edwards AJ, Ferrari R, Figueira WF, Golbuu Y, Humanes A, Martinez HM, Pygas DR, Sommer B, Van Der Steeg E, Bythell JC, Guest JR
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Royal Society Open Science
Year: 2025
Volume: 12
Issue: 7
Print publication date: 01/07/2025
Online publication date: 23/07/2025
Acceptance date: 03/07/2025
Date deposited: 05/08/2025
ISSN (electronic): 2054-5703
Publisher: Royal Society Publishing
URL: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.250271
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.250271
Data Access Statement: Al original data and code used for analysis (R version 4.0.2) have been deposited at [75]. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250271#B75 All datasets analysed are publicly available as of the date of publication. Any additional information required to reanalyse the data reported in this paper is available from the lead contact upon request. Supplementary material is available online [76]. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.250271#B76
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