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CORAL REEF ECOLOGY

Functional trade-offs in fish communities

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 6, pages 669–670 (2022)Cite this article

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Combining pantropical fish community surveys with bioenergetic models has revealed the global distribution of reef-fish ecosystem functions, and that trade-offs linked to demographic and trophic structure prevent any community from maximizing all functions simultaneously.

Coral reefs are declining worldwide as they suffer the combined effects of stressors such as overfishing, pollution and global warming1. The resilience of coral reefs depends on the integrity of key ecosystem functions that promote coral growth and recovery2, such as herbivory (in which fish and invertebrates remove reef algae)2. Consequently, scientists and managers have begun to focus more on assessing and protecting coral reef ecosystem functions, particularly those provided by fishes. However, measuring ecosystem functions directly is highly challenging, and most work has used simple proxies such as species richness or biomass to represent reef fish functions3. Although these metrics provide a useful approximation, they assume that ecosystem functions scale linearly with biomass and that all functions can be maximized simultaneously. Writing in Nature Ecology & Evolution, Schiettekatte et al.4 used bioenergetic models to move beyond simple proxies and directly estimate five ecosystem functions performed by reef fishes: nitrogen excretion, phosphorous excretion, biomass production, herbivory and piscivory (consumption of other fishes). They found that all five functions were related to biomass and showed similar geographical patterns, but that no single location displayed high levels of all functions simultaneously. The work shows that allometric relationships with biomass, and biological trade-offs between functions, prevent the existence of ‘perfectly’ functioning reefs, even in the most pristine locations.

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Fig. 1: Contrasting patterns in ecosystem functions linked to differences in community structure.

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  1. Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Matthew McLean

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  1. Matthew McLean
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Correspondence to Matthew McLean.

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McLean, M. Functional trade-offs in fish communities. Nat Ecol Evol 6, 669–670 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01706-1

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