Figure 1.
Location of Tatsukushi at Shikoku Island (Japan). b. Local geographic features of Tatsukushi Bay with the area survey and approximate locations of transects. Color scale corresponds to bathymetry obtained by sonar exploration [25].
Figure 2.
Mean, maximum, and minimum seawater temperatures at the study site (at 5 m in depth) from November 2009 to October 2011. Inset represents daily temperature variations for the same period (data from [21], [25]). b. Long-term trend in sea surface temperature anomalies (deviation of mean annual temperature from mean temperature of the preceding three decades) from 1902 to 2011 in the northern part of the seas south of Japan. Red line corresponds to the linear regression analysis showing the +1.25°C increase occurring over the last century (data from [37]).
Figure 3.
Percentage cover of major benthic categories. b. Appearance of coral community at Tatsukushi dominated by Acropora spp (at 5 m in depth).
Table 1.
Contributions of different coral categories.
Figure 4.
Functional composition of the coral assemblage at the study site.
Based on a. the occurrence of species (the dotted line represents the functional composition of the Great Barrier Reef corals assemblage, from [28]) and b. the abundance of species. Axes represent the relative contribution of each of the 8 functional groups identified according to their roles in ecosystem processes.
Table 2.
Summary of definitions of terms used in this article.
Figure 5.
Relationship between the diversity and functional diversity (A and B)/redundancy (C): schematic scenarios (modified from [61] and [62]).
A: Functional diversity increases at declining rates with increased species diversity, which reaches an asymptote at high diversity levels; B: high functional redundancy at low species diversity followed by a rapid increase at an intermediate species diversity, until functional diversity asymptotes at high diversity levels [49]. Photo credits: CM Hsu.