Table 1.
Different potential bases for a definition of MCEs.
Fig 1.
Dive site locations around the island of Utila, Honduras, Caribbean.
Sites are listed with GPS co-ordinates and abbreviations starting left in WGS84 format: (1) Raggedy Cay (RC: N 16.09065964, W -86.9941015), (2) The Maze (TMA: N 16.11266214, W -86.94911793), (3) Little Bight (LB: N 16.07926302, W -86.92942222), (4) Coral View (CV: N 16.08823274,W -86.91094506), (5) Rocky Point (RP: N 16.08784039, W -86.88423403). The base map was sourced from GADM database of Global Administrative Areas under a CC BY licence with permission.
Fig 2.
Benthic percentage cover by category at each sampling site.
Each site was sampled with four replicate transects at each depth except 5m at RC which had three. Trends are plotted with a loess line and their 95% confidence intervals. CCA = Coralline Crustose Algae. Panels represent different sites: (a) RC, (b) CV, (c) RP, (d) LB, (e) TMA.
Fig 3.
Transects discriminated by observed scleractinia communities.
NMDS plot of transects based on Bray-Curtis dissimilarities from Scleractinia species counts. Symbols denote site and colours depths.
Fig 4.
A map of assemblages at transect locations.
Circles have been coloured based on cluster assignment of a transect at the indicated site and depth, with four transects (circles) per depth at each site. The number of the cluster relates to the analyses explicitly presented in S2 Table. Dual alignment was assigned to any transect for which R provided an indicator value for more than one cluster. There are 4 transects visualised per depth at a site. One 70m transect at TMA was removed as it captured no Scleractinia. The video file for one 5m transect at RC was corrupted. (a) Analysis based on species level ID. (b) Analysis based on genus level ID.
Fig 5.
Dataset average depth ranges of scleractinia species.
Box plots of species depth ranges generated from pooled data of all sites. Box plots are coloured internally to reveal the assemblage they belong to. All box plots on the darker background belong to Cluster 1, the lighter background denotes cluster 2. Lines extend 1.5x the interquartile range or to the last observation. Points are outliers beyond this limit.
Fig 6.
Biodiversity metrics and their relationships with depth.
Comparison of different metrics for detecting changes in reef structure. Data are pooled from all sites. Shaded areas are one standard error from the mean (the denominator of the equation was the number of sites sampled at a given depth). The colour coding of the shading represents assemblages consistent with previous plots. Dashed lines are the dataset average boundaries for the deepest transects statistically significantly aligning as shallow and the shallowest transects similarly aligning as deep. Other biodiversity measures and rates of change are plotted for comparison. Note other metrics show no obvious features to demark a switch in community composition.