Sura Shayna A, Lloyd-Smith James O, Fong Peggy
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2025 Jul 3;21(7):e1013221. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013221. eCollection 2025 Jul.
Ecological communities globally are shifting to degraded states, motivating research into attributes supporting resilience or leading to alternative stable states. Coral reef communities are particularly vulnerable as they are facing myriad anthropogenic impacts that contribute to shifts away from coral dominance, motivating much research on whether these shifts are gradual and reversible transitions versus alternative stable states. Empirical studies demonstrate functionally-diverse herbivorous fish communities support coral reef resilience to anthropogenic impacts. However, few coral reef models incorporate herbivore and algal functional groups and quantify their effects on reef resilience and alternative stable states. We built a coral reef model that includes herbivorous fish functional groups and their algal targets and explored how this expansion affects predictions of resilience and alternative stable states under different scenarios of human impacts. We found evenness across the functional groups of herbivores is increasingly important for reef recovery as fishing pressure increases, and recovery is promoted when algal communities begin with more turf than macroalgae. Our findings also highlight that models omitting functional groups that comprise real communities will miss crucial phenomena, such as loss of alternative stable states for browser-dominated communities, or continued presence of alternative stable states in grazer-dominated communities even when fishing pressure is removed entirely. This work advances our ability to understand and predict coral reef resilience and alternative stable states in the Anthropocene, and provides guidance for conservation policy on fishing practices.
全球生态群落正逐渐向退化状态转变，这促使人们对支持恢复力或导致替代稳定状态的属性展开研究。珊瑚礁群落尤为脆弱，因为它们正面临着众多人为影响，这些影响导致群落从以珊瑚为主导的状态发生转变，从而引发了大量关于这些转变是渐进且可逆的过渡还是替代稳定状态的研究。实证研究表明，功能多样的草食性鱼类群落有助于珊瑚礁抵御人为影响。然而，很少有珊瑚礁模型纳入草食动物和藻类功能群，并量化它们对珊瑚礁恢复力和替代稳定状态的影响。我们构建了一个包含草食性鱼类功能群及其藻类目标的珊瑚礁模型，并探讨了这种扩展如何影响在不同人类影响情景下对恢复力和替代稳定状态的预测。我们发现，随着捕捞压力的增加，草食动物功能群之间的均匀度对珊瑚礁恢复变得越来越重要，并且当藻类群落以更多的丝状藻而非大型藻开始时，恢复会得到促进。我们的研究结果还强调，忽略构成真实群落的功能群的模型将遗漏关键现象，例如以啃食性动物为主导的群落中替代稳定状态的丧失，或者即使完全消除捕捞压力，以食草性动物为主导的群落中替代稳定状态仍持续存在。这项工作提升了我们在人类世理解和预测珊瑚礁恢复力及替代稳定状态的能力，并为渔业保护政策提供了指导。
