Predicting Coral Species Richness: The Effect of Input Variables, Diversity and Scale
Coral reefs are facing a biodiversity crisis due to increasing human impacts, consequently, one third of reef-building corals have an elevated risk of extinction. Logistic challenges prevent broad-scale species-level monitoring of hard corals; hence it has become critical that effective proxy indica...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
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PLOS
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/12914 |
| _version_ | 1848748208755310592 |
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| author | Richards, Zoe Hobbs, Jean-Paul |
| author_facet | Richards, Zoe Hobbs, Jean-Paul |
| author_sort | Richards, Zoe |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Coral reefs are facing a biodiversity crisis due to increasing human impacts, consequently, one third of reef-building corals have an elevated risk of extinction. Logistic challenges prevent broad-scale species-level monitoring of hard corals; hence it has become critical that effective proxy indicators of species richness are established. This study tests how accurately three potential proxy indicators (generic richness on belt transects, generic richness on point-intercept transects and percent live hard coral cover on point-intercept transects) predict coral species richness at three different locations and two analytical scales. Generic richness (measured on a belt transect) was found to be the most effective predictor variable, with significant positive linear relationships across locations and scales. Percent live hard coral cover consistently performed poorly as anindicator of coral species richness. This study advances the practical framework for optimizing coral reef monitoring programs and empirically demonstrates that generic richness offers an effective way to predict coral species richness with a moderate level of precision. While the accuracy of species richness estimates will decrease in communities dominated byspecies-rich genera (e.g. Acropora), generic richness provides a useful measure of phylogenetic diversity and incorporating this metric into monitoring programs will increase the likelihood that changes in coral species diversity can be detected. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:01:24Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-12914 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:01:24Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | PLOS |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-129142019-08-22T06:56:09Z Predicting Coral Species Richness: The Effect of Input Variables, Diversity and Scale Richards, Zoe Hobbs, Jean-Paul Coral reefs are facing a biodiversity crisis due to increasing human impacts, consequently, one third of reef-building corals have an elevated risk of extinction. Logistic challenges prevent broad-scale species-level monitoring of hard corals; hence it has become critical that effective proxy indicators of species richness are established. This study tests how accurately three potential proxy indicators (generic richness on belt transects, generic richness on point-intercept transects and percent live hard coral cover on point-intercept transects) predict coral species richness at three different locations and two analytical scales. Generic richness (measured on a belt transect) was found to be the most effective predictor variable, with significant positive linear relationships across locations and scales. Percent live hard coral cover consistently performed poorly as anindicator of coral species richness. This study advances the practical framework for optimizing coral reef monitoring programs and empirically demonstrates that generic richness offers an effective way to predict coral species richness with a moderate level of precision. While the accuracy of species richness estimates will decrease in communities dominated byspecies-rich genera (e.g. Acropora), generic richness provides a useful measure of phylogenetic diversity and incorporating this metric into monitoring programs will increase the likelihood that changes in coral species diversity can be detected. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/12914 10.1371/journal.pone.0083965 PLOS fulltext |
| spellingShingle | Richards, Zoe Hobbs, Jean-Paul Predicting Coral Species Richness: The Effect of Input Variables, Diversity and Scale |
| title | Predicting Coral Species Richness: The Effect of Input Variables, Diversity and Scale |
| title_full | Predicting Coral Species Richness: The Effect of Input Variables, Diversity and Scale |
| title_fullStr | Predicting Coral Species Richness: The Effect of Input Variables, Diversity and Scale |
| title_full_unstemmed | Predicting Coral Species Richness: The Effect of Input Variables, Diversity and Scale |
| title_short | Predicting Coral Species Richness: The Effect of Input Variables, Diversity and Scale |
| title_sort | predicting coral species richness: the effect of input variables, diversity and scale |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/12914 |