Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Data Processing Description
• Data Files
• Related Publications
• Related Datasets
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Deployments
• Project Information
• Funding

This dataset contains parrotfish bite observations for the study plots at Pickles Reef, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary from 2009-2013. Published in Nature Communications (2016) doi:10.1038/ncomms11833, Supplementary Data 2c.

Natural history of the study site: 
This experiment was conducted in the area of Pickles Reef (24.99430, -80.40650), located east of Key Largo, Florida in the United States. The Florida Keys reef tract consists of a large bank reef system located approximately 8 km offshore of the Florida Keys, USA, and paralleling the island chain. Our study reef is a 5-6 m deep spur and groove reef system within this reef tract. The reefs of the Florida Keys have robust herbivorous fish populations and are relatively oligotrophic. Coral cover on most reefs in the Florida Keys, including our site, is 5-10%, while macroalgal cover averages ~15%, but ranges from 0-70% depending on location and season. Parrotfishes (Scaridae) and surgeonfishes (Acanthuridae) are the dominant herbivores on these reefs as fishing for them was banned in 1981. The other important herbivore on Caribbean reefs, the urchin Diadema antillarum, remains at low densities across the Florida Keys following the mass mortality event in 1982-3.

Related Reference:
Zaneveld, J.R., D.E. Burkepile, A.A. Shantz, C. Pritchard, R. McMinds, J. Payet, R. Welsh, A.M.S. Correa, N.P. Lemoine, S. Rosales, C.E. Fuchs, and R. Vega Thurber (2016) Overfishing, nutrient pollution, and temperature interact to disrupt coral reefs down to microbial scales. Nature Communications 7:11833 doi:10.1038/ncomms11833 Supplementary Information

BCO-DMO Processing:
- added conventional header with dataset name, PI name, version date;
- modified parameter names to conform with BCO-DMO naming conventions;
- reformatted date from m/d/yyyy to ISO_Date: yyyy-mm-dd;
- reduced number of digits for 'abs_squared_deviation_from_28' from 8 to 2;
- replaced 'unknown' and 'null' with 'nd' ('no data');
- renamed 'Env' to 'sample_type'.

Description from NSF award abstract:
Coral reefs in the Caribbean Sea are undergoing unprecedented declines in coral cover due in large part to climate change, pollution, and reductions in fish biodiversity and abundance. Macroalgae have become abundant on reefs, probably due to decreases in herbivory (e.g., through overfishing) and increases in anthropogenic inputs of nutrients. The spread of macroalgae has negative feedbacks on reef recovery because algae are often superior competitors and suppress growth of both adult and juvenile corals. A majority of reef studies to date have focused on how stressors affect macroorganisms, while relatively few have investigated how these stressors and the resultant algal-dominated states affect microorganisms. Yet, coral reef-associated microbes play significant roles in coral reef ecosystems through biogeochemical cycling and disease. Since microbes are important mutualists of corals as well as potential pathogens, it is important to understand the mechanisms that control their taxonomic and functional diversity.

The goal of this proposal is to quantify how alterations of top-down (removal of herbivorous fish) and bottom-up (inorganic nutrient addition) forces alter macrobial as well as microbial dynamics on coral reefs in order to understand the mechanisms that reinforce coral-depauperate reef systems. This work asks two main questions:

Q1. How do nutrient enrichment and herbivore removal interact to affect benthic algal abundance, coral-algal interactions, and coral survivorship and growth?

Q2. How do nutrient enrichment and herbivore removal affect bacterial abundance, taxonomic diversity, and functional diversity on and within corals?

The proposed research will directly and empirically address many of the current hypotheses about how bottom-up and top-down forces alter reef dynamics. The PIs will investigate: (1) the impact of multiple stressors over several years; (2) impacts on multiple levels of biological organization (from fishes to algae to microbes); and (3) the mechanisms underlying changes in algal-coral microbe interactions. Significantly, the approach will provide the statistical power necessary to distinguish between seasonal- and stress-induced changes in macro- and microbial diversity.

Resulting Publication:
Zaneveld, J.R., D.E. Burkepile, A.A. Shantz, C. Pritchard, R. McMinds, J. Payet, R. Welsh, A.M.S. Correa, N.P. Lemoine, S. Rosales, C.E. Fuchs, and R. Vega Thurber (2016) Overfishing, nutrient pollution, and temperature interact to disrupt coral reefs down to microbial scales. Nature Communications 7:11833 doi:10.1038/ncomms11833.
Access to data via Supplementary Information.