Despite their role in supporting diverse marine fish communities, tropical rocky shores and reefs have attracted less research and fewer targeted conservation efforts compared to coral reefs. We studied fish community composition in Playa Blanca Marine Reserve (9 degrees 40' N - 84 degrees 40' W), a rocky shore site on the central Pacific coast of Costa Rica. We conducted visual surveys of fish...

Hong Kong is within the tropics and has a seasonal climate. In winter, shores support patches of ephemeral macroalgae and areas of seemingly bare rock close to crevices where molluscan herbivores are abundant. Using a factorial design of herbivore exclusions in areas far and close to crevices, the development of algal assemblages was monitored in mid-shore, cleared areas, in winter. To estimate...

SYNOPSIS. An important step in connecting the organismal response to thermal stress to patterns of community structure is determining at what scale discernable levels of variation are manifested. The temperature signal to which organisms may potentially respond varies at many spatial scales including microhabitat, tidal height, site and latitude. A number of studies have taken physiological ass...

Functional diversity is intimately linked with community assembly processes, but its large-scale patterns of variation are often not well understood. Here, we investigated the spatiotemporal changes in multiple trait dimensions ("trait space") along vertical intertidal environmental stress gradients and across a landscape scale. We predicted that the range of the trait space covered by local as...

Rocky coastlines are frequently used for recreation, however, they are often highly exposed and hazardous environments resulting in high risk to visitors. Traditional approaches to managing human safety in coastal settings (such as the surf lifesaving clubs that have proven effective on beaches) are not necessarily transferable to rock platforms due to their often remote and fragmented distribu...