Habitat attributes mediate herbivory and influence community development in algal metacommunities

Abstract

Understanding the drivers and impacts of spatiotemporal variation in species abundance on community trajectories is key to understanding the factors contributing to ecosystem resilience. Temporal variation in species trajectories across patches can provide compensation for species loss and can influence successional patterns. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms that lead to patterns of species or spatial compensation and how those patterns may be mediated by consumer–resource relationships. Here we describe an experiment testing whether habitat attributes (e.g., structural complexity and spatial heterogeneity) mediate the effects of herbivory on tropical marine macroalgal communities by reducing accessibility and detectability, respectively, leading to variable trajectories among algal species at community (within patch) and metacommunity (i.e., among patch) scales. Reduced accessibility (greater habitat complexity) decreased the effects of herbivory (i.e., depressed consumption rate, increased algal species richness), and both accessibility and detectability (spatial heterogeneity) influenced algal community structure. Moreover, decreased accessibility at the community scale and a mosaic of accessibility at the metacommunity scale led to variation in community assembly. We suggest that habitat attributes can be important influencers of consumer–resource interactions on coral reefs, which in turn can increase species diversity, promote species succession, and enhance stability in algal metacommunities.