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Increasingly intense and frequent ocean heatwaves are causing widespread coral mortality. These heatwaves are just one of the many stressors — among for instance ocean acidifi cation, nutrient pollution and destructive fi shing practices — that have caused widespread decline of coral reefs over the past century. This destruction of reefs threatens the remarkable biodiversity of organisms that depend upon coral reefs. However, recent research suggests that many of the fi shes and invertebrates that inhabit coral reefs may play an underappreciated role in infl uencing the resistance and recovery of corals to stressors, especially those caused by global climate change such as ocean heatwaves. Unraveling the threads that link these coral inhabitants to the corals’ response to stressors has the potential to weave a more comprehensive model of resilience that integrates the plight of coral reefs with the breathtaking diversity of life they host. Here, we aim to elucidate the critical roles that coral-associated fishes and invertebrates play in mediating coral resilience to environmental stressors. By integrating recent research findings, we aim to showcase how these often-overlooked organisms influence coral resilience in the face of climate change. 

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Photogrammetry is an emerging tool that allows scientists to measure important habitat characteristics of coral reefs at multiple spatial scales. However, the ecological benefits of using photogrammetry to measure reef habitat have rarely been assessed through direct comparison to traditional methods, especially in settings where manual measurements are more feasible and affordable. Here, we applied multiple methods to measure coral colonies (Pocillopora spp.) and asked whether photogrammetric or manual observations better describe short-term colony growth and links between colony size and the biodiversity of coral-dwelling fishes and invertebrates. Using photogrammetry, we measured patterns in changes in coral volume that were otherwise obscured by high variation from manual measurements. Additionally, we found that photogrammetry-based estimates of colony skeletal volume best predicted the abundance and richness of animals living within the coral. This study highlights that photogrammetry can improve descriptions of coral colony size, growth, and associated biodiversity compared to manual measurements. 

IntroductionChanges in temperature can fundamentally transform how species interact, causing wholesale shifts in ecosystem dynamics and stability. Yet we still have a limited understanding of how temperature-dependence in physiology drives temperature-dependence in species-interactions. For predator-prey interactions, theory predicts that increases in temperature drive increases in metabolism and that animals respond to this increased energy expenditure by ramping up their food consumption to meet their metabolic demand. However, if consumption does not increase as rapidly with temperature as metabolism, increases in temperature can ultimately cause a reduction in consumer fitness and biomass via starvation. MethodsHere we test the hypothesis that increases in temperature cause more rapid increases in metabolism than increases in consumption using the California spiny lobster (Panulirus interruptus) as a model system. We acclimated individual lobsters to temperatures they experience sacross their biogeographic range (11, 16, 21, or 26°C), then measured whether lobster consumption rates are able to meet the increased metabolic demands of rising temperatures. Results and discussionWe show positive effects of temperature on metabolism and predation, but in contrast to our hypothesis, rising temperature caused lobster consumption rates to increase at a faster rate than increases in metabolic demand, suggesting that for the mid-range of temperatures, lobsters are capable of ramping up consumption rates to increase their caloric demand. However, at the extreme ends of the simulated temperatures, lobster biology broke down. At the coldest temperature, lobsters had almost no metabolic activity and at the highest temperature, 33% of lobsters died. Our results suggest that temperature plays a key role in driving the geographic range of spiny lobsters and that spatial and temporal shifts in temperature can play a critical role in driving the strength of species interactions for a key predator in temperate reef ecosystems.