Cumming, Graeme, James, Nicholas L., Chua, Chia-Miin, and Huertas, Victor (2024) A framework and review of evidence of the importance of coral reefs for marine birds in tropical ecosystems. Ecology and Evolution, 14 (8). e70165.

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Abstract

As global heating and other anthropogenic influences alter tropical marine environments, it is unclear how marine bird populations will be impacted and whether their current roles in tropical marine ecosystems will change. Although marine birds roost and breed on tropical islands in large numbers, the direct trophic interactions between these birds and their prey across the tropics are poorly documented. We present a first framework for evaluating the dependence on and contributions of marine birds to tropical coral reef ecosystems and use it to examine the evidence for different kinds of interaction, focusing primarily on avian diets. We found 34 publications between 1967 and 2023 that presented a total of 111 data sets with enough detail for quantitative dietary analysis of tropical marine birds. Only two bird species out of 37 (5.4%) had diets of >50% coral reef fishes and only one, the Pacific Reef Egret, appeared to depend almost entirely on reef-based production. Marine birds are also prey for other marine organisms, but insufficient data are available for quantitative analysis. Evidence for indirect effects of birds in tropical marine environments is stronger than for direct dependence on coral reefs, particularly in relation to nutrient concentration and the fertilisation impacts of guano on corals. Dispersal of propagules (e.g. seeds, spores, invertebrate eggs) by bathing, drinking, resting or foraging birds is under-studied and poorly documented. Although the degradation of coral reefs appears unlikely to have a significant direct impact on food availability for most marine bird populations, indirect effects involving marine birds may be disrupted by global environmental change.

Item ID:	83655
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	2045-7758
Keywords:	Aves, fish, food web, foraging, ocean, seabird, trophic
Related URLs:	Publisher
Copyright Information:	© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
Funders:	Western Australia Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (ARC), University of Western Australia (UWA), James Cook University (JCU
Research Data:	https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fece3.70165&file=ece370165-sup-0001-AppendixS1.xlsx, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fece3.70165&file=ece370165-sup-0002-AppendixS2.txt, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fece3.70165&file=ece370165-sup-0003-AppendixS3.docx
Date Deposited:	17 Sep 2024 02:44
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310302 Community ecology (excl. invasive species ecology) @ 50% 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 50%
SEO Codes:	18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1805 Marine systems and management > 180599 Marine systems and management not elsewhere classified @ 100%
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