Fishing for resilience : herbivore and algal dynamics on coral reefs in Kenya.

Herbivory is a key process that mediates the abundance of primary producers and community composition in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. On tropical coral reefs, changes in herbivory are often related to phase shifts between coral-dominance and dominance by seaweeds, or foliose macroalgae. Resilience or capacity to resist and reverse such phase shifts is, therefore, viewed as a critical function on coral reefs. This thesis used grazer exclusion and assay experiments at six sites within three different fisheries management regimes in Kenya to identify the impacts of herbivores (sea urchins and fishes) on algal dynamics in the context of coral reef resilience. First, I examined the grazing rates necessary to prevent phase shifts by quantifying consumption and algal production. Here, I found that, over a 390-day experiment, at least 50 percent of algal production must be consumed to avoid accumulation of algal biomass. Using video observations, I also showed that scraping parrotfishes remove more algae (per unit of fish biomass) than previously assumed, and that sea urchins, if released from predation, have similar impacts to fishes. Then I focused on algal succession, and found that sea urchins and fishes have different effects that are mediated by their abundances and species composition. Where sea urchins were less abundant and parrotfishes absent (e.g. young fisheries closures), progression of algae from turfs to early and then late successional macroalgae occurred rapidly and within 100 days. I then turned my focus to the removal of already established macroalgae (grown for > 1 yr in the absence of herbivores) and showed that sea urchins and browsing fishes were able to remove significant amounts of macroalgae where either herbivore was abundant. However, using multiple-choice selectivity assays and in situ video recordings, I found that browsing fishes fed very selectively with low overlap in diet among species, leading to low functional redundancy within a high diversity system. Finally, using long-term survey data (from 28 sites) to build a 43-year chronosequence, I showed that it is possible that the effects of herbivory will not be constant across transitions from open fishing to fishery closures through non-linear grazing intensity. Therefore, increases in herbivory within fisheries closures may not be immediate and may allow a window of opportunity for algae to go from turf to unpalatable macroalgae until scraping and browsing fishes fully recover from fishing (~ 20 years). The findings in this thesis are novel and raise concern over the potential implications of the slow recovery of parrotfishes or, given lower than expected functional redundancy in grazing effects, the absence of even one browsing fish species in fisheries closures. Overall, this thesis highlights the importance of herbivore community dynamics in mediating interactions among algae, and provides new insights for conservation and management actions that attempt to bolster the resilience of coral reefs