Biodiversity, population regulation, and the stability of coral-reef fish communities
- 12 August 2002
- journal article
- Published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Vol. 99 (17) , 11241-11245
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.162653499
Abstract
Unprecedented population declines and extinctions because of human activities, combined with a growing recognition that such losses affect the stability of ecosystems, underscore the need to better understand how populations persist naturally. We provide field experimental evidence that high biodiversity-in particular, the combined effects of predators and competitors-acts in a way that regulates the size of local fish populations within their coral-reef community. These results indicate that complex interactions among multiple species are necessary for the stability of a highly diverse community, and so forewarn that overexploiting such species may have cascading negative consequences for the entire system.Keywords
This publication has 30 references indexed in Scilit:
- Historical Overfishing and the Recent Collapse of Coastal EcosystemsScience, 2001
- Complex Species Interactions and the Dynamics of Ecological Systems: Long-Term ExperimentsScience, 2001
- Consequences of changing biodiversityNature, 2000
- Synergistic Predation, Density Dependence, and Population Regulation in Marine FishScience, 1997
- Human Domination of Earth's EcosystemsScience, 1997
- Random Walks in a Metapopulation: How Much Density Dependence is Necessary for Long-Term Persistence?Journal of Animal Ecology, 1996
- Biodiversity: Population Versus Ecosystem StabilityEcology, 1996
- Larval Supply and Patterns of Recruitment for Two Caribbean Reef fishes Stegastes partitrusMarine and Freshwater Research, 1996
- Population Regulation in Theory and PracticeEcology, 1994
- Aggression in Damselfish: Adult-Juvenile InteractionsIchthyology & Herpetology, 1993