%0 Journal Article %J Nature %D 2016 %T Bright spots among the world’s coral reefs %A Cinner, Joshua E. %A Huchery, Cindy %A Aaron M MacNeil %A Graham, Nicholas A.J. %A McClanahan, Tim R. %A Maina, Joseph %A Maire, Eva %A Kittinger, John N. %A Hicks, Christina C. %A Mora, Camilo %A Allison, Edward H. %A D’Agata, Stephanie %A Hoey, Andrew %A Feary, David A. %A Larry B Crowder %A Williams, Ivor D. %A Kulbicki, Michel %A Vigliola, Laurent %A Wantiez, Laurent %A Graham J. Edgar %A Rick D Stuart-Smith %A Sandin, Stuart A. %A Green, Alison L. %A Hardt, Marah J. %A Beger, Maria %A Friedlander, Alan %A Campbell, Stuart J. %A Holmes, Katherine E. %A Shaun Wilson %A Brokovich, Eran %A Brooks, Andrew J. %A Cruz-Motta, Juan J. %A Booth, David J. %A Chabanet, Pascale %A Gough, Charlie %A Tupper, Mark %A Ferse, Sebastian C. A. %A Sumaila, U. Rashid %A Mouillot, David %X

Ongoing declines in the structure and function of the world’s coral reefs require novel approaches to sustain these ecosystems and the millions of people who depend on them. A presently unexplored approach that draws on theory and practice in human health and rural development is to systematically identify and learn from the ‘outliers’—places where ecosystems are substantially better (‘bright spots’) or worse (‘dark spots’) than expected, given the environmental conditions and socioeconomic drivers they are exposed to. Here we compile data from more than 2,500 reefs worldwide and develop a Bayesian hierarchical model to generate expectations of how standing stocks of reef fish biomass are related to 18 socioeconomic drivers and environmental conditions. We identify 15 bright spots and 35 dark spots among our global survey of coral reefs, defined as sites that have biomass levels more than two standard deviations from expectations. Importantly, bright spots are not simply comprised of remote areas with low fishing pressure; they include localities where human populations and use of ecosystem resources is high, potentially providing insights into how communities have successfully confronted strong drivers of change. Conversely, dark spots are not necessarily the sites with the lowest absolute biomass and even include some remote, uninhabited locations often considered near pristine. We surveyed local experts about social, institutional, and environmental conditions at these sites to reveal that bright spots are characterized by strong sociocultural institutions such as customary taboos and marine tenure, high levels of local engagement in management, high dependence on marine resources, and beneficial environmental conditions such as deep-water refuges. Alternatively, dark spots are characterized by intensive capture and storage technology and a recent history of environmental shocks. Our results suggest that investments in strengthening fisheries governance, particularly aspects such as participation and property rights, could facilitate innovative conservation actions that help communities defy expectations of global reef degradation.
 

%B Nature %V 535 %P 416 - 419 %8 21 Jul 2016 %G eng %U http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/nature18607 %N 7612 %! Nature %R 10.1038/nature18607 %0 Journal Article %J Ecology Letters %D 2016 %T Marine protected areas increase resilience among coral reef communities %A Camille Mellin %A Aaron M MacNeil %A Cheal, Alistair J. %A Emslie, Michael J. %A M Julian Caley %E Bellwood, David %K Acanthaster planci %K benthos %K Biodiversity %K bleaching %K crown-of-thorns starfish %K cyclone %K disturbance %K fish %K Great Barrier Reef %K marine reserves %X

With marine biodiversity declining globally at accelerating rates, maximising the effectiveness of conservation has become a key goal for local, national and international regulators. Marine protected areas (MPAs) have been widely advocated for conserving and managing marine biodiversity yet, despite extensive research, their benefits for conserving non-target species and wider ecosystem functions remain unclear. Here, we demonstrate that MPAs can increase the resilience of coral reef communities to natural disturbances, including coral bleaching, coral diseases, Acanthaster planci outbreaks and storms. Using a 20-year time series from Australia's Great Barrier Reef, we show that within MPAs, (1) reef community composition was 21–38% more stable; (2) the magnitude of disturbance impacts was 30% lower and (3) subsequent recovery was 20% faster that in adjacent unprotected habitats. Our results demonstrate that MPAs can increase the resilience of marine communities to natural disturbance possibly through herbivory, trophic cascades and portfolio effects.
 

%B Ecology Letters %8 01 Mar 2016 %G eng %U http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/ele.12598 %! Ecol Lett %R 10.1111/ele.12598 %0 Journal Article %J PLoS ONE %D 2014 %T A re-evaluation of the size of the white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) population off California, USA %A George H. Burgess %A Barry Bruce %A Cailliet, Gregor M. %A Goldman, Kenneth J. %A Grubbs, R. Dean %A Lowe, Christopher G. %A Aaron M MacNeil %A Mollet, Henry F. %A Weng, Kevin C. %A O'Sullivan, John B. %E Connell, Sean D. %X

White sharks are highly migratory and segregate by sex, age and size. Unlike marine mammals, they neither surface to breathe nor frequent haul-out sites, hindering generation of abundance data required to estimate population size. A recent tag-recapture study used photographic identifications of white sharks at two aggregation sites to estimate abundance in “central California” at 219 mature and sub-adult individuals. They concluded this represented approximately one-half of the total abundance of mature and sub-adult sharks in the entire eastern North Pacific Ocean (ENP). This low estimate generated great concern within the conservation community, prompting petitions for governmental endangered species designations. We critically examine that study and find violations of model assumptions that, when considered in total, lead to population underestimates. We also use a Bayesian mixture model to demonstrate that the inclusion of transient sharks, characteristic of white shark aggregation sites, would substantially increase abundance estimates for the adults and sub-adults in the surveyed sub-population. Using a dataset obtained from the same sampling locations and widely accepted demographic methodology, our analysis indicates a minimum all-life stages population size of >2000 individuals in the California subpopulation is required to account for the number and size range of individual sharks observed at the two sampled sites. Even accounting for methodological and conceptual biases, an extrapolation of these data to estimate the white shark population size throughout the ENP is inappropriate. The true ENP white shark population size is likely several-fold greater as both our study and the original published estimate exclude non-aggregating sharks and those that independently aggregate at other important ENP sites. Accurately estimating the central California and ENP white shark population size requires methodologies that account for biases introduced by sampling a limited number of sites and that account for all life history stages across the species' range of habitats.
 

%B PLoS ONE %V 9 %P e98078 %8 16 Jun 2014 %G eng %U http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0098078 %N 6 %! PLoS ONE %R 10.1371/journal.pone.0098078 %0 Journal Article %J Ecological Applications %D 2012 %T Multi-scale marine biodiversity patterns inferred efficiently from habitat image processing %A Camille Mellin %A Parrott, Lael %A Serge Andréfouët %A Bradshaw, Corey %A Aaron M MacNeil %A M Julian Caley %K Australia %K Biodiversity %K coral reef fish %K ecological indicators %K Great Barrier Reef %K Landsat %K mean information gain %K multilevel mixed-effects model %K photography %K remote sensing %K spectral signal. %X

Cost-effective proxies of biodiversity and species abundance, applicable across
a range of spatial scales, are needed for setting conservation priorities and planning action. We
outline a rapid, efficient, and low-cost measure of spectral signal from digital habitat images
that, being an effective proxy for habitat complexity, correlates with species diversity and
requires little image processing or interpretation. We validated this method for coral reefs of
the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia, across a range of spatial scales (1 m to 10 km), using
digital photographs of benthic communities at the transect scale and high-resolution Landsat
satellite images at the reef scale. We calculated an index of image-derived spatial
heterogeneity, the mean information gain (MIG), for each scale and related it to univariate
(species richness and total abundance summed across species) and multivariate (species
abundance matrix) measures of fish community structure, using two techniques that account
for the hierarchical structure of the data: hierarchical (mixed-effect) linear models and
distance-based partial redundancy analysis. Over the length and breadth of the GBR, MIG
alone explained up to 29% of deviance in fish species richness, 33% in total fish abundance,
and 25% in fish community structure at multiple scales, thus demonstrating the possibility of
easily and rapidly exploiting spatial information contained in digital images to complement
existing methods for inferring diversity and abundance patterns among fish communities.
Thus, the spectral signal of unprocessed remotely sensed images provides an efficient and lowcost
way to optimize the design of surveys used in conservation planning. In data-sparse
situations, this simple approach also offers a viable method for rapid assessment of potential
local biodiversity, particularly where there is little local capacity in terms of skills or resources
for mounting in-depth biodiversity surveys.

%B Ecological Applications %V 22 %P 792 - 803 %8 01 Apr 2012 %U http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/11-2105.1 %N 3 %! Ecological Applications %R 10.1890/11-2105.1