DETECTING REGIONAL VARIATION USING META-ANALYSIS AND LARGE-SCALE SAMPLING: LATITUDINAL PATTERNS IN RECRUITMENT

By Terry P. Hughes, Andrew H. Baird, E. Dinsdale, V. Harriott, N. Moltschaniwskyj, M. Pratchett, Jason Tanner, B. Willis. 2002

130 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Regional-scale variation of recruitment by marine organisms may reflect geographic patterns in adult stock sizes or fecundities, large-scale hydrodynamic features that influence the transport of larvae (e.g., currents, upwelling), and patterns of early mortality. In turn, recruitment may play a vital role in determining patterns of adult abundance and community structure, from local to biogeographic scales. We examined spatial variation in recruitment by corals at a regional scale, along 3300 km of the tropical and subtropical coast of eastern Australia (10°–31° S). We used two complementary approaches: (1) a metaanalysis of 21 different studies undertaken over a 16-yr period, each of which was generally conducted at a single reef, and (2) a large-scale sampling effort in which recruitment was measured in two years on 33 reefs arrayed along the length of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Our goal is to compare the emergent large-scale picture derived from many small-scale studies with patterns revealed by shorter-term regional sampling. The two approaches show very similar large-scale patterns. Recruitment by spawning corals (mainly acroporids) was highest in the central GBR and declined steadily with increasing latitude by up to more than 20-fold. A smaller decline occurred on the northern GBR between Australian and Papua New Guinea. Recruitment by brooding corals (mostly pocilloporids) was greatest in the northern GBR and also declined to the south. The latitudinal decline in brooders was three-to fivefold, i.e., not as great as for spawners. Consequently, the proportion of brooded recruits increased to the south, and they generally exceeded spawners on the southern GBR and on isolated subtropical reefs at higher latitudes. Our meta-analysis shows that fully half of the variation in the ratio of spawners to brooders is attributable to one of 11 variables that we extracted from the published studies: the month when the recruitment panels were deployed. This result suggests that the intensity and timing of spawning have a crucial impact on large-scale patterns of recruitment. Elsewhere, we tested this hypothesis in the field, and confirmed that regional variation in recruitment by spawning acroporid corals was driven by spatial and temporal variation in the extent of mass spawning. Together, large-scale sampling and meta-analyses provide a powerful, combined approach for investigating large-scale patterns and the mechanisms underlying them.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/df73e6102ae4cb45f95e26995d7962b782f9707e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. M. Pratchett
2. B. Willis
3. M. Trapon
4. L. Penin
5. Terry P. Hughes
6. S. Pennings
7. D. Ayre
8. E. Howells

In Global and Planetary Change

1. M. Pratchett
2. M. Trapon
3. L. Penin
4. B. Willis
5. Terry P. Hughes
6. M. Kendall
7. M. V. Oppen
8. S. Pennings

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. B. Willis
2. M. Pratchett
3. L. Penin
4. M. Kendall
5. M. V. Oppen
6. Terry P. Hughes
7. M. Tokeshi
8. S. Pennings

Citations in the corpus

• Comparative Effects of Different Disturbances in Coral Reef Habitats in Moorea, French Polynesia (2011, background): “Most studies are conducted at very limited temporal and spatial scales [57], and there are a limited number of locations around the world where there has been sufficient research conducted over an extended period to provide information on long-term changes in Tiahura Vaipahu”
• Reproduction and recruitment of scleractinian corals in a high-latitude coral community, Amakusa, southwestern Japan (2006, result): “These recruitment rates were consistent with values from high latitude sites in eastern Australia, except that there, brooding species were the dominant recruits (Harriott 1992, 1999; Harriott and Banks 1995; Harriott and Simpson 1997; Hughes et al. 2002).”
• High genetic differentiation and cross-shelf patterns of genetic diversity among Great Barrier Reef populations of Symbiodinium (2009, background): “The number of larvae produced, the direction of transport and successful recruitment into populations are highly variable both spatially and temporally (e.g. Hughes et al. 2002).”
• GEOGRAPHIC VARIATION IN POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE INTERACTIONS AMONG SALT MARSH PLANTS (2003, background): “…Vermeij 1977, 1978, Jeanne 1979, Lubchenco 1980, Bertness et al. 1981, Menge and Lubchenco 1981, Gaines and Lubchenco 1982, Fawcett 1984, Hay 1984, Steinberg 1992, Bryant et al. 1994, Bolser and Hay 1996, Connolly et al. 2001, Pennings and Moore 2001, Pennings et al. 2001, Hughes et al. 2002).”
• Latitudinal variation in coral communities in eastern Australia: a qualitative biophysical model of factors regulating coral reefs (2002, unknown): “A similar pattern has been reported to the north and south of the Great Barrier Reef by Hughes et al. (1999, 2002).”
• Sources of variation in consumer-diet δ15N enrichment: a meta-analysis (2003, unknown): “Instead, as other authors have done (Gurevitch and Hedges 1993; Curtis and Wang 1998; Downing et al. 1999; Hughes et al. 2002), we elected to include all estimates that otherwise met our criteria.”
• Long-term changes in the geographic distribution and population structures of Osilinus lineatus (Gastropoda: Trochidae) in Britain and Ireland (2007, background): “…since records began in 1861, with an acceleration in the rate of warming since the mid-1980s (Levitus et al., 2000; Houghton et al., 2001; Hulme et al., 2002) in response to increased anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (Easterling et al., 2000; Houghton et al., 2001; Hughes et al., 2002).”
• Climate change, genotypic diversity and gene flow in reef-building corals (2004, background): “Populations at high latitudes may be more vulnerable to climate change because they are typically at the margins of geographical ranges, and are likely to be small and isolated (Hughes et al. 2002a).”
• Survival dynamics of scleractinian coral larvae and implications for dispersal (2008, unknown): “…lifespans on the order of 200 or more days suggest that corals are able to maintain energy reserves longer than previously thought, and thus potentially to disperse very long distances, a fact that may partly explain the extraordinarily large geographic ranges of many corals (Hughes et al. 2002).”