Laurent Vigliola

Institute of Research for Development | IRD · 227 - Biocomplexity of Coral Reefs Ecosystems in the Indo-Pacific (CoRéUs 2)

Human impact increasingly alters global ecosystems, often reducing biodiversity and disrupting the provision of essential ecosystem services to humanity. Therefore, preserving ecosystem functioning is a critical challenge of the twenty-first century. Coral reefs are declining worldwide due to the pervasive effects of climate change and intensive fi...

Baselines and benchmarks (B&Bs) are needed to evaluate the ecological status and fisheries potential of coral reefs. B&Bs may depend on habitat features and energetic limitations that constrain biomass within the natural variability of the environment and fish behaviors. To evaluate if broad B&Bs exist, we compiled data on the biomass of fishes in...

Reef sharks are vulnerable predators experiencing severe population declines mainly due to overexploitation. However, beyond direct exploitation, human activities can produce indirect or sublethal effects such as behavioral alterations. Such alterations are well known for terrestrial fauna but poorly documented for marine species. Using an extensiv...

Additional information for «Unexpected high vulnerability of functions in wilderness areas: evidence from coral reef fishes » concerning the Methods and Results section. The Life History Traits (LHT) categorization is described in details, and additional references using those LHT are given. In addition, details concerning the taxonomic and functio...

High species richness is thought to support the delivery of multiple ecosystem functions and services under changing environments. Yet, some species might performunique functional roles while others are redundant. Thus, the benefits of high species richness in maintaining ecosystem functioning are uncertain if functions have little redundancy, pote...

Fishing pressure on coral reef ecosystems has been frequently linked to reductions of large fishes and reef fish biomass. Associated impacts on overall community structure are, however, less clear. In size-structured aquatic ecosystems, fishing impacts are commonly quantified using size spectra, which describe the distribution of individual body si...

Although marine reserves represent one of the most effective management responses to human impacts, their capacity to sustain the same diversity of species, functional roles and biomass of reef fishes as wilderness areas remains questionable, in particular in regions with deep and long-lasting human footprints. Here we show that fish functional div...

Ongoing declines in the structure and function of the world's coral reefs require novel approaches to sustain these ecosystems and the millions of people who depend on them. A presently unexplored approach that draws on theory and practice in human health and rural development is to systematically identify and learn from the 'outliers'-places where...

Supplementary Figures 1-9 and Supplementary Tables 1-6

Small-scale spatial and temporal variability in animal abundance is an intrinsic characteristic of marine ecosystems but remains largely unknown for most animals, including coral reef fishes. In this study, we used a remote autonomous unbaited video system and recorded reef fish assemblages during daylight hours, 10 times a day for 34 consecutive d...

The depletion of natural resources has become a major issue in many parts of the world, with the most accessible resources being most at risk. In the terrestrial realm, resource depletion has classically been related to accessibility through road networks. By contrast, in the marine realm, the impact on living resources is often framed into the Mal...

Coral reefs are among the most species-rich and threatened ecosystems on Earth, yet the extent to which human stressors determine species occurrences, compared with biogeography or environmental conditions, remains largely unknown. With ever-increasing human-mediated disturbances on these ecosystems, an important question is not only how many speci...

Additional figures and tables to complement «Unexpected high vulnerability of functions in wilderness areas: evidence from coral reef fishes ». This is a set of figures first to complement the Methods such as the accumulation curves of species as well as conceptual figures for the vulnerability framework used. Additional figures are also provided c...

Additional information for «Unexpected high vulnerability of functions in wilderness areas: evidence from coral reef fishes » concerning the Methods and Results section. The Life History Traits (LHT) categorization is described in details, and additional references using those LHT are given. In addition, details concerning the taxonomic and functio...

Additional figures and tables to complement «Unexpected high vulnerability of functions in wilderness areas: evidence from coral reef fishes ». This is a set of figures first to complement the Methods such as the accumulation curves of species as well as conceptual figures for the vulnerability framework used. Additional figures are also provided c...

Dans le Pacifique sud, essentiellement marin, la biodiversité des espèces marque un gradient de répartition qui va en déclinant de l’ouest vers l’est. La Polynésie française, avec ses 5,5 millions de km2, occupe une place privilégiée au sein de ce gradient et il est intéressant de connaître pour les poissons coralliens l’exacte répartition de cette...

Understanding the dynamics of marine populations is critical to managing marine systems effectively and requires information on patterns of population dispersal and connectivity that are still poorly known. We used transgenerational marking to study larval dispersal of the humbug damselfish, Dascyllus aruanus, in the patchy reef seascape of the sou...

Mangrove forests are one of the world’s most threatened tropical ecosystems and are strongly connected to coral reefs as many reef fish species use mangroves as nursery habitats. The permanence of these species population depends on whether mangroves are obligatory, important or accessory juvenile habitats. In this study, we used otolith microchem...

Significance Our results indicate that, even in highly diverse systems like coral reefs, we can no longer assume that the erosion of species diversity can be discounted by the high probability of functional redundancy: i.e., that several species can support the same function. Indeed, we show that fish species tend to disproportionately pack into a...

Understanding the drivers of species' geographic distribution has fundamental implications for the management of biodiversity. For coral reef fishes, mangroves have long been recognized as important nursery habitats sustaining biodiversity in the Western Atlantic but there is still debate about their role in the Indo-Pacific. Here, we combined LA-I...

The impact of anthropogenic activity on ecosystems has highlighted the need to move beyond the biogeographical delineation of species richness patterns to understanding the vulnerability of species assemblages, including the functional components that are linked to the processes they support. We developed a decision theory framework to quantitative...

Several studies currently focus on tiger shark behavior between reefs. However, no information has been collected in small remote atolls yet. Two sub-adults tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) were recorded on the same stereo BRUVS (Baited Remote Underwater Video Systems) at 10 m depth inside the lagoon of North Minerva, a very small atoll 5.6 km long...

Beyond the loss of species richness [1-3], human activities may also deplete the breadth of evolutionary history (phylogenetic diversity) and the diversity of roles (functional diversity) carried out by species within communities, two overlooked components of biodiversity. Both are, however, essential to sustain ecosystem functioning and the associ...

Estimating diversity and abundance of fish species is fundamental for understanding community structure and dynamics of coral reefs. When designing a sampling protocol, one crucial step is the choice of the most suitable sampling technique which is a compromise between the questions addressed, the available means and the precision required. The obj...

Delineating regions is an important first step in understanding the evolution and biogeography of faunas. However, quantitative approaches are often limited at a global scale, particularly in the marine realm. Reef fishes are the most diversified group of marine fishes, and compared to most other phyla, their taxonomy and geographical distributions...

In the marine realm, the tropics host an extraordinary diversity of taxa but the drivers underlying the global distribution of marine organisms are still under scrutiny and we still lack an accurate global predictive model. Using a spatial database for 6336 tropical reef fishes, we attempted to predict species richness according to geometric, bioge...

The Coral Sea, located at the southwestern rim of the Pacific Ocean, is the only tropical marginal sea where human impacts remain relatively minor. Patterns and processes identified within the region have global relevance as a baseline for understanding impacts in more disturbed tropical locations. Despite 70 years of documented research, the Coral...

A large number of studies have documented large spatio-temporal variations in fish assemblages at scales ranging from local to regional and seasonal to decadal. For obvious logistic reasons, intra- and inter-days variations in fish assemblage are poorly known despite strong potential implications for fish stock assessment. We used unbaited rotating...

Effective conservation requires rigorous baselines of pristine conditions for assessing human impact on biotopes and biotic communities. Baselines will provide absolute reference states that could potentially be reached within the increasingly large number of protected areas around the world. For most marine ecosystems, these reference states cert...

Significance Marine organisms disperse mostly by ocean currents as larval propagules. Therefore, it is commonly thought that the duration of the larval stage is the fundamental determinant of geographic range size. Using a global compilation of reef fish traits, we test an alternative hypothesis: adult traits associated with population establishmen...

In the marine realm, the tropics host an extraordinary diversity of taxa but the drivers underlying the global distribution of marine organisms are still under scrutiny and we still lack an accurate global predictive model. Using a spatial data-base for 6336 tropical reef fishes, we attempted to predict species richness according to geometric, biog...

In the present work, a biophysical dispersal model is used to understand the role of the physical environment in determining reef fish larval dispersal patterns in the South-West Lagoon of New Caledonia. We focus on a reef fish species, the humbug damselfish Dascyllus aruanus, to investigate seasonal variability of simulated larval retention at the...

The biogeography of coral reef fishes is a complex issue still poorly understood largely because i) the knowledge of geographic ranges of many species is still far from complete; and ii) identification remains problematic for several taxa, especially within some families such as the Muraenidae, Ophichtidae, Apogonidae, Gobiidae and Trypterygiidae....

Reef fish assessments were undertaken in 17 Pacific islands to describe the status of finfish resources in 63 villages where fishing is mainly artisanal. Surveys were performed by recording the number and size of edible fish species and benthic composition. Fishing impact was described through six proxies representing level of catch, alternative in...

Background/Questions/Methods Reef sharks are experiencing rapid declines in abundance due to overfishing. Recent studies suggest that a high biomass of sharks promotes a trophic structure within a fish community very different to that on a reef where sharks are in low numbers. Although this implies that reef sharks have an important top-down role...

The distribution of species in their environment is largely defined by habitat characteristics. Both species and habitat distributions can be used to define conservation areas, especially in highly diversified ecosystems like coral reefs where biodiversity inventories are lacking. The main objective of this study was to test the relationship betwee...

Video techniques are increasingly used for monitoring marine ecosystems. In order to address some of the issues of the most popular video systems (uncontrolled effect of baits, cost of stereo systems, fixed plan…), a new system, the High-Definition Rotating Videos (STAVIRO) has been developed since 2007 in New Caledonia. The system consists in a re...

Mangrove forests are one of the world’s most threatened tropical ecosystems and are strongly connected to coral reefs as many reef fish species use mangroves as nursery habitats. The degree to which these species can survive the disappearance of mangroves depends on whether mangroves are obligatory, essential or accessory juvenile habitats. In this...

Information on connectivity among estuarine populations is fundamental to understanding the ecology of these populations and to successfully manage their harvesting. Yet, such knowledge remains very limited even for some of the most widespread and heavily exploited species. Between latitudes 42°N and 42°S, the striped mullet (Mugil cephalus) consti...

Video techniques are increasingly used for monitoring marine ecosystems. The High-Definition Rotating Video system (STAVIRO) has been developed in 2007 in New Caledonia. It consists in a remote, unbaited and not stereo (single camera) video system equipped with a motor to rotate the camera (60 degrees rotation every 30 seconds). The system is direc...

New Caledonia has long been recognized as both a diversity and endemism hotspot for freshwater and terrestrial fauna. Investigations conducted on ichtyofauna of the island have until now mainly exclusively focused on coral reefs and river streams overlooking the ~80 estuaries scattered all around the island. To provide first information on the icht...

Lionfish (Pterois volitans and P. miles) have become a major concern in the western Attantie and Caribbean since their introduction in the 1980s. Invasive lionfish can reach very high population densities on coral reefs in their invaded range, yet there are few data from their native range in the Indo-Pacific for comparison. We compiled data on the...

Highlights ► Reef fisheries is likely to be unsustainable in half of all (63 sites) South Pacific communities studied. ► Combined analysis of resource, fishery and socio-economic data revealed indicators for reef fisheries management. ► Hb/Cb ratio confirmed as resource indicator (high correlation with CPUE, total annual catch). ► Current catch rat...

Precise knowledge of lifetime migrations is vital in exploited fish species, since all essential habitats must be protected to maintain sustainable stock levels. The present study used multi-element otolith fingerprints of the gilthead sea bream Sparus aurata (L.) to discriminate its main juvenile and adult habitats in the Languedoc-Roussillon regi...

Observed reef fish species and corresponding functional traits, as used for building functional groups: diet (P: piscivores, C: carnivores, H: herbivores-detritus feeders, Z: plankton feeders), adult size (1: <8 cm, 2: 8–15 cm, 3: 15–30 cm, 4: 30–50 cm, 5: 50–80 cm, 6: >80 cm), home range (1: sedentary; 2: mobile; 3: very mobile) and gregariousness...

GLM testing the effects of habitat and fishing pressure on the redundancy of each observed function (diet×size classification scheme) and on the functional redundancy of the whole coral reef fish assemblage. (DOC)

GLM testing the effects of habitat on the redundancy of each observed function (diet×size classification scheme) and on the functional redundancy of the whole coral reef fish assemblage. (DOC)

The relationship between species and the functional diversity of assemblages is fundamental in ecology because it contains key information on functional redundancy, and functionally redundant ecosystems are thought to be more resilient, resistant and stable. However, this relationship is poorly understood and undocumented for species-rich coastal m...

Résumé : Ce document décrit a) les différents types d'observation utilisés par les partenaires pour les suivis écologiques et les observations qui en découlent ; b) les attributs et caractéristiques des espèces à prendre en compte, et propose pour chaque type d'observation les métriques qui peuvent être calculées en relation avec l'évaluation des e...

On coral reefs, sharks are experiencing rapid declines in abundance due to overfishing. Recent studies suggest that a high biomass of sharks promotes a trophic structure within the fish community very different to that on a reef where sharks are in low numbers. Although this implies that reef sharks have an important top-down role in structuring co...