Fiona Chong

University of Leeds · School of Biology

Anthropogenic impacts are typically detrimental to tropical coral reefs, but the effect of increasing environmental stress and variability on the size structure of coral communities remains poorly understood. This limits our ability to effectively conserve coral reef ecosystems because size specific dynamics are rarely incorporated. Our aim is to q...

Outbreaks of the cyanobacteriosponge Terpios hoshinota are one of the many issues contributing to coral reef decline in the Indo-Pacific. This species occasionally undergoes local outbreaks, becoming an aggressive space competitor and overgrowing and killing zooxanthellate corals. Large outbreaks have been observed in Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands...

Floating life (obligate neuston) is a core component of the ocean surface food web. However, only 1 region of high neustonic abundance is known so far, the Sargasso Sea in the Subtropical North Atlantic gyre, where floating life provides critical habitat structure and ecosystem services. Here, we hypothesize that floating life is also concentrated...

The open ocean beyond national jurisdiction covers nearly half of Earth’s surface and is largely unexplored. It is also an emerging frontier for new types of human activity. Understanding how new activities interact with high seas ecosystems is critical for our management of this other half of Earth. Using The Ocean Cleanup (TOC) as a model, we dem...

Anthropogenic impacts are typically detrimental to tropical coral reefs, but the effect of increasing environmental stress and variability on the size structure of coral communities remains poorly understood. This limits our ability to effectively conserve coral reef ecosystems because size specific dynamics are rarely incorporated. Our aim is to q...

Aim Despite the awareness that climate change impacts are typically detrimental to tropical coral reefs, the effect of increasing environmental stress and variability on the population size structure of coral species remains poorly understood. This gap in knowledge limits our ability to effectively conserve coral reef ecosystems because size specif...

Floating life (obligate neuston) is a core component of the ocean surface food web. However, only one region of high neustonic abundance is known so far, the Sargasso Sea in the Subtropical North Atlantic, where floating life provides critical habitat structure and ecosystem services. Here, we hypothesize that floating life is also concentrated in...

1. Size is a biological characteristic that drives ecological processes from micro- scopic to geographic spatial scales, influencing cellular energetics, species fit- ness, population dynamics, and ecological interactions. Methods to measure size from images (e.g., proxies of body size, leaf area, and cell area) occur along a gradient from manual a...

Lateral organs arranged in spiral phyllotaxy are separated by the golden angle, ~137.5○, leading to chirality: either clockwise or counter-clockwise. In some species, leaves are asymmetricsuch that they are smaller and curved towards the side ascending the phyllotactic spiral. As such, these asymmetries lead to mirroring of leaf shapes in plants of...

Lateral organs arranged in spiral phyllotaxy are separated by the golden angle, ≈137.5°, leading to handedness: either clockwise or counter-clockwise. In some species, leaves are asymmetric such that they are smaller and curved towards the side ascending the phyllotactic spiral. As such, these asymmetries lead to mirroring of leaf shapes in plants...

Ecologists often analyze relative abundances, which are an example of compositional data. However, they have made surprisingly little use of recent advances in the field of compositional data analysis. Compositions form a vector space in which addition and scalar multiplication are replaced by operations known as perturbation and powering. This alg...

Supplemental information on model fitting

Raw relative abundance data, R code, stan code

Ecologists often analyze relative abundances, which are compositions (sets of non-negative numbers with a fixed sum). However, they have made surprisingly little use of recent advances in the field of compositional data analysis. Compositions form a vector space in which addition and scalar multiplication are replaced by operations known as perturb...

Ecologists often analyze relative abundances, which are compositions (sets of non-negative numbers with a fixed sum). However, they have made surprisingly little use of recent advances in the field of compositional data analysis. Compositions form a vector space in which addition and scalar multiplication are replaced by operations known as perturb...

Raw data and code

Supporting information

Coral reefs are dynamic systems whose composition is highly influenced by unpredictable biotic and abiotic factors. Understanding the spatial scale at which long-term predictions of reef composition can be made will be crucial for guiding conservation efforts. Using a 22-year time series of benthic composition data from 20 reefs on the Kenyan and T...

Coral reefs are dynamic systems whose composition is highly influenced by unpredictable biotic and abiotic factors. Understanding the spatial scale at which long-term predictions of reef composition can be made will be crucial for guiding conservation efforts. Using a 22-year time series of benthic composition data from 20 reefs on the Kenyan and T...

Coral reefs are dynamic systems whose composition is highly influenced by unpredictable biotic and abiotic factors. Understanding the spatial scale at which long-term predictions of reef composition can be made will be crucial for guiding conservation efforts. Using a 22-year time series of benthic composition data from 20 reefs on the Kenyan and T...