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Herbivore community function shapes resilience and bistability of coral reefs

Fig 3

Impacts of herbivore community composition and fishing pressure on coral reef recovery from disturbance.

Heatmaps showing how the initial abundance of herbivorous fishes that are grazers versus browsers affect final coral cover for fishing pressures ranging from 0 to 0.4 (rows) and for initial generalist abundance set to 0 (A-C), 0.2 (D-F), or 0.4 (G-I). Total herbivore abundance is restricted to 0.9; therefore, as initial generalist abundance increases, the maximum abundance of browsers+grazers has to decrease accordingly, resulting in smaller response spaces in the panels. Other initial conditions include: C_t=0 = 0.15, T_t=0 = 0.7, and M_t=0 = 0. Other parameter values: i_C = 0.05, i_T = 0.05, i_M = 0, b_C = 0.3, b_T = 0.8, b_M = 0.5, d_C = 0.1, g_T = 2, g_M = 1, r = 1, η_T = 0, η_M = 1, α_T = 0.25, α_M = 0.5, σ = 0.6, and γ = 0.1. Note: final coral cover values show very little variation for scenarios resulting in coral-dominated states, with 91% of final coral cover values >0.5 (coral dominated) within the range of 0.65 – 0.72, hence the similarity in colors.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1013221.g003