Time series showing coral cover, fish density and percentage of economic agents engaging in tourism for different values of κ and h H , within a single patch. The top two graphs show dynamics in the cyclic coral-dominant regime, while the bottom two show transient dynamics in the high-fish regime.

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... found three distinct regimes that the system's local dynamics can take (Fig. 2). The first of these featured cyclical dynamics, with coral dominant most of the time and macroalgae always present. In this regime, tourism eventually composed all economic activity (Fig. 3), as z rose and fell depending on the relative abundances of coral and fish but was always higher at 280 the end of a cycle than at its beginning. Due to the lack of fishing pressure, the herbivorous fish and macroalgae populations followed oscillatory boom-bust patterns similar to those found in the Rosenzweig-MacArthur model. The ...

Context 2

... featured stable, nonzero levels of coral, macroalgae and herbivorous fish. Here, macroalgae was dominant over coral, with coral cover of the seabed typically above 10 percent but below 30 percent. Economic activity converged to a state where only fishing was viable, although very long transients were possible depending on the social parameters (Fig. 3). However, fish populations were higher in this regime than they were in the cyclical coral-dominant regime. The third regime was characterized by local extinction of both coral and herbivorous fish, with macroalgae taking up all available space on the seabed. Economic activity tended towards the all-fishing equilibrium while there were ...