It has been argued that recent phase-shifts towards algal dominance in the Caribbean could have a profoundly negative influence on the future survival of settling corals. In the lower Florida Keys, USA, we used field surveys in areas with recovering populations of the formerly abundant herbivorous black urchin Diadema antillarum (philippi, 1845) and comparatively stable populations of the urchi...

Coral reefs are subject to a high frequency of recurrent biological and physical disturbances. The temporal and spatial scales of these are often large and difficult to study, so that most of our knowledge of disturbances on coral reefs comes from investigations conducted at one or a few sites, over short periods of time. We argue that studying single events in isolation can be misleading and t...