Periodic Reporting for period 1 - coralINT (Integrated Niche Theory: linking environmental, compositional and functional change on coral reefs)
Reporting period: 2022-11-01 to 2025-04-30
There is potential for feedback loops whereby organisms, through their ecological function, engineer the environmental conditions they are then exposed to. Environmental conditions, in turn, affect organismal life histories and hence their function rates. Project coralINT aims to explore these loops by integrating three ecological niche concepts: the Grinellian niche (species resource and environmental needs), the Eltonian niche (species function), and niche construction (the effect species functions have on the environment). The project focuses on reef corals, a group of organisms that build highly complex structures, which harbour an extraordinary concentration of biodiversity and are known to be highly sensitive to change in environmental conditions. The project aims to use simultaneous estimates of species composition, environmental conditions and function, mapped with high precision on coral reefs to develop and test theory linking across the three niche concepts.
Over the course of the project we plan to map 100 plots of 100m2 each, revisiting each plot at least twice to quantify rates of change. A subset of 20 plots will be surveyed every year to provide a time series of over a decade by combining with previously existing data. So far, we have surveyed a total of 40 plots, 20 of which twice. In addition, the first phase of the project has focused on methodological innovation, with the aim to use novel sensors and approaches to estimate distributions of functional rates and environmental change. Finally, the theoretical component of the project has focused on formalizing and testing assumptions regarding relationships among organisms, and between structure and the environment.
Early results emerging from the project support the hypothesis that biological structures modify the environment in non-trivial ways. For example, increasing reef rugosity diversifies local light environments. Ongoing research expands the approach taken to other environmental variables. Moreover, ongoing work quantifies the implications of this microhabitat variation in terms of species distributions and spatial variation in ecological function.