Functional Richness and Resilience in Coral Reef Communities

Within the Anthropocene functional diversity of coral communities is changing rapidly, putting resilience many reef ecosystems in jeopardy. A better understanding relationship between and could reveal practical ways to achieve increased resilience. However, manipulating experimentally challenging, consequently links diversity, resilience, ecosystem functioning remain obscure. We used an ecologically detailed agent-based model conduct a virtual experiment which was manipulated over entire trait space scleractinian corals. Using imputed dataset 798 species eight key traits, we assembled 245 functionally distinct communities, subjected cyclone bleaching event. then measured four different aspects their quantified for each measure respective effect ( i ) richness (FRic), ii community-weighted means (CWM) types trait: effect, resistance, recovery, competitive. FRic represents volume occupied by community space, while CWM indicates location communities’ centroid space. found significant positive on three measures resilience: with higher recovered surface cover faster had more rugosity 10 years after disturbances. In contrast, resistance community—i.e., capacity maintain when disturbances—was independent determined primarily traits. By analyzing dynamics trade-offs, show that increases via selection insurance effects due presence competitive i.e., those highly dominant contribute most complexity habitat recover quickly from Building results our correlation analysis, discuss potential serve as proxy present strategy can provide direction on-going restoration efforts, pave way sustaining context rapid global change.