Maria Beger

University of Leeds · School of Biology

The exceptional diversity of shallow‐water marine fishes contributes to the nutrition of millions of people worldwide through coastal wild‐capture fisheries, with different species having diverse nutritional profiles. Fishes in ecosystems are reservoirs of micronutrients with benefits to human health. Yet, the amount of micronutrients contained in...

In shallow water zooxanthellate coral communities, large aggregations of benthic groups other than scleractinians have been occasionally noted, and sometimes linked with various disturbances. Here we report on a large aggregation of a corallimorpharian, Rhodactis sp., at a site off Himeshima Island, Kochi, Japan from surveys in July 2023 and August...

Systematic conservation planning (SCP) is an operational and scientific framework that assists in deciding where, how and when to implement conservation intervention, given known constraints and preferential weights. Studies using SCP approaches have proliferated due to their immediate relevance for applied conservation. For example, they can help...

The amount of ocean protected from fishing and other human impacts has often been used as a metric of conservation progress. However, protection efforts have highly variable outcomes that depend on local conditions, which makes it difficult to quantify what coral reef protection efforts to date have actually achieved at a global scale. Here, we dev...

Extensive global habitat degradation and the climate crisis are tipping the biosphere toward a “sixth” mass extinction and marine communities will not be spared from this catastrophic loss of biodiversity. The resilience of marine communities following large-scale disturbances or extinction events is mediated by the life-history traits of species a...

Marine mammal foraging grounds are popular focal points for marine protected area (MPA) implementation, despite being temporally dynamic, requiring continuous monitoring to infer prey availability and abundance. Marine mammal distributions are assumed to be driven by their prey in foraging areas, but limited understanding of prey distributions ofte...

The role of species interactions in setting species range limits is rarely empirically explored. Here, we quantify host and parasite densities in subtropical eastern Australia (26.65°–30.20°S) to examine whether parasitism might contribute to range limitation of Acropora corals at their cold-range boundary. 79% of Acropora corals had endolithic bar...

Subtropical reefs host a dynamic mix of tropical, subtropical, and temperate species that is changing due to shifts in the abundance and distribution of species in response to ocean warming. In these transitional communities, biogeographic affinity is expected to predict changes in species composition, with projected increases of tropical species a...

Improved understanding of biotic interactions is necessary to accurately predict the vulnerability of ecosystems to climate change. Recently, co-occurrence networks built from environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding data have been advocated as a means to explore interspecific interactions in ecological communities exposed to different human and envi...

Global warming causes functional shifts and reorganisation in marine communities through range shifts to high-latitude reefs and cnidarian bleaching mortality in the tropics. Such changes threaten the integrity and structure of marine communities, especially as foundational and associated species are reduced or lost. However, comparatively little i...

Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding has the potential to revolutionize conservation planning by providing spatially and taxonomically comprehensive data on biodiversity and ecosystem conditions, but its utility to inform the design of protected areas remains untested. Here, we quantify whether and how identifying conservation priority areas with...

Long-term demographic studies at biogeographic transition zones can elucidate how body size mediates disturbance responses. Focusing on subtropical reefs in eastern Australia, we examine trends in the size-structure of corals with contrasting life-histories and zoogeographies surrounding the 2016 coral bleaching event (2010–2019) to determine their...

Aims Transformation of species and functional composition on subtropical reefs are ongoing due to poleward range shifts of some tropical species, with largely unknown consequences to ecosystem functioning. Trait‐based approaches are powerful tools to quantify such changes. Here, we evaluated changes in the trait composition of coral‐associated fish...

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...

Sustainably managing fisheries requires regular and reliable evaluation of stock status. However, most multispecies reef fisheries around the globe tend to lack research and monitoring capacity, preventing the estimation of sustainable reference points against which stocks can be assessed. Here, combining fish biomass data for >2000 coral reefs, we...

The persistent exposure of coral assemblages to more variable abiotic regimes is assumed to augment their resilience to future climatic variability. Yet, while the determinants of coral population resilience across species remain unknown, we are unable to predict the winners and losers across reef ecosystems exposed to increasingly variable conditi...

Context Global and local stressors can drive phase shifts from zooxanthellate scleractinian coral communities to macroalgae-dominated ecosystems. However, our understanding of altered ecosystem functioning, productivity and stability remains limited as pre-shift data are typically lacking for degraded coral-reef sites. Aims Here, we assessed functi...

Escalating climatic and anthropogenic pressures expose ecosystems worldwide to increasingly stochastic environments. Yet, our ability to forecast the responses of natural populations to this increased environmental stochasticity is impeded by a limited understanding of how exposure to stochastic environments shapes demographic resilience. Here, we...

Climate change is driving rapid and widespread erosion of the environmental conditions that formerly supported species persistence. Existing projections of climate change typically focus on forecasts of acute environmental anomalies and global extinction risks. The current projections also frequently consider all species within a broad taxonomic gr...

Contemporary Earth is facing a dual-extinction crisis; biologists estimate annual losses of species at least 1000 times that of historic background rates, whilst linguists predict up to 90% of languages could become extinct by the end of the century. Prior research has noted a tendency for biological and linguistic diversity to co-occur in time and...

Temperate reefs are at the forefront of warming-induced community alterations resulting from poleward range shifts. This tropicalisation is exemplified and amplified by tropical species’ invasions of temperate herbivory functions. However, whether other temperate ecosystem functions are similarly invaded by tropical species, and by what drivers, re...

Scientists and managers rely on indicator taxa such as coral and macroalgal cover to evaluate the effects of human disturbance on coral reefs, often assuming a universally positive relationship between local human disturbance and macroalgae. Despite evidence that macroalgae respond to local stressors in diverse ways, there have been few efforts to...

Context The health of coral reefs is declining rapidly across the world because of anthropogenic impacts. In the mega-diverse Coral Triangle, the consequences of chronic overfishing and human use are worst near coastal population centres. Aims The remote islands and reefs in the centre of the Banda Sea (Indonesia) remain largely unstudied, but thei...

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...

Truly sustainable development in a human-altered, fragmented marine environment subject to unprecedented climate change, demands informed planning strategies in order to be successful. Beyond a simple understanding of the distribution of marine species, data describing how variations in spatio-temporal dynamics impact ecosystem functioning and the...

Escalating climate impacts on coral reefs are increasingly expanding management goals beyond preserving biodiversity to also maintaining ecosystem functions. Morphological and ecological species traits can help assess changes within reef communities beyond taxonomic identities alone. However, our limited understanding of trait interactions between...

Larval dispersal connectivity is typically integrated into spatial conservation decisions at regional or national scales, but implementing agencies struggle with translating these methods to local scales. We used larval dispersal connectivity at regional (hundreds of kilometers) and local (tens of kilometers) scales to aid in design of networks of...

Indonesia’s marine ecosystems are among the most diverse in the world, supporting extensive critical habitats with strong connections to coastal communities. To keep pace with increasing pressures on the environment, conservation efforts need to be strengthened and expanded. The Government of Indonesia has committed to protecting marine ecosystems...

With the rapid growth of Indonesia’s marine protected area (MPAs) estate in Indonesia, reaching 23.9 million hectares by January 2020, attention needs to be focused on strengthening the effectiveness of MPA management. Consolidating and expanding protection of Indonesia’s marine resources is critical with increasing pressure from a fast-expanding p...

Larval dispersal is an important component of marine reserve networks. Two conceptually different approaches to incorporate dispersal connectivity into spatial planning of these networks exist, and it is an open question as to when either is most appropriate. Candidate reserve sites can be selected individually based on local properties of connecti...

Wallacea—the meeting point between the Asian and Australian fauna—is one of the world's largest centers of endemism. Twenty-three million years of complex geological history have given rise to a living laboratory for the study of evolution and biodiversity, highly vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures. In the present article, we review the historic...

Escalating climatic and anthropogenic pressures expose ecosystems worldwide to increasingly frequent disturbances. Yet, our ability to forecast the responses of natural populations to these disturbances is impeded by a limited understanding for how exposure to stochastic environments shapes population resilience. Instead, the resilience, and vulner...

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...

The dispersal of larvae by ocean currents is likely to represent an increasingly important driver of marine population dynamics across fragmented habitats. A boost in availability of larval dispersal data from biophysical simulations has therefore led to routine calculations of population connectivity metrics that are used for area-based management...

Integrative and proactive conservation approaches are critical to the long-term persistence of biodiversity. Molecular data can provide important information on evolutionary processes necessary for conserving multiple levels of biodiversity (genes, populations, species, and ecosystems). However, molecular data are rarely used to guide spatial conse...

Sustainably managing fisheries requires regular and reliable evaluation of stock status. However, most multispecies reef fisheries around the globe tend to be data-poor and lack research and monitoring capacity (e.g., long-term fishery data), preventing the estimation of sustainable reference points against which stocks can be assessed. Here, combi...

Marine protected areas are an important tool to recover and protect coral reef biodiversity. Connected networks of individual marine protected areas enhance system-wide resilience and persistence via the exchange of individuals, supporting greater population sizes and functional genetic diversity. Conservation area networks are typically designed w...

Setting appropriate conservation strategies in a multi-threat world is a challenging goal, especially because of natural complexity and budget limitations that prevent effective management of all ecosystems. Safeguarding the most threatened ecosystems requires accurate and integrative quantification of their vulnerability and their functioning, par...

Connectivity underpins the persistence of life; it needs to inform biodiversity conservation decisions. Yet, when prioritising conservation areas and developing actions, connectivity is not being operationalised in spatial planning. The challenge is the translation of flows associated with connectivity into conservation objectives that lead to acti...

Predicting the viability of species exposed to increasing climatic stress requires an appreciation for the mechanisms underpinning the success or failure of marginal populations. Rather than traditional metrics of long‐term population performance, here we illustrate that short‐term (i.e. transient) demographic characteristics, including measures of...

Abstract Tropical cyclones generate large waves that physically damage coral communities and are commonly cited as a worsening threat to coral reefs under climate change. However, beyond projections of ocean basin‐scale changes in cyclone intensity, the other determinants of future coral reef damage such as cyclone size and duration remain uncertai...

The European COST Action “Unifying Approaches to Marine Connectivity for improved Resource Management for the Seas” (SEA-UNICORN, 2020‐2025) is an international research coordination initiative that unites an interdisciplinary community of scientists and policymakers from over 100 organizations across Europe and beyond. It is establishing a globall...

In coral reef systems, increasingly frequent, severe climate change-driven disturbances are responsible for declines in vulnerable species, and a reorganisation of assemblages. Whilst these changes will certainly elicit shifts in ecosystem functioning, how trait distributions and cross-taxon interactions are altered remains largely unmeasured, hamp...

Tropicalization is rapidly restructuring subtropical marine communities. A key driver for tropicalization is changes in herbivory pressure that are linked with degrading ecosystem stability. Consequently, subtropical algal beds are being displaced by climate-mediated colonisation of coral communities. This process is thought to be aided by the elev...

Coral communities are threatened by an increasing plethora of abiotic and biotic disturbances. Preventing the ensuing loss of coral coverage and diversity calls for a mechanistic understanding of resilience across coral species and populations that is currently lacking in coral reef science. Assessments into the dynamics of coral populations typica...

Ocean warming is increasing the incidence, scale, and severity of global-scale coral bleaching and mortality, culminating in the third global coral bleaching event that occurred during record marine heatwaves of 2014-2017. While local effects of these events have been widely reported, the global implications remain unknown. Analysis of 15,066 reef...

Accelerating rates of biodiversity loss underscore the need to understand how species achieve resilience—the ability to resist and recover from a/biotic disturbances. Yet, the factors determining the resilience of species remain poorly understood, due to disagreements on its definition and the lack of large‐scale analyses. Here, we investigate how...

Urbanized coral reefs experience anthropogenic disturbances caused by coastal development, pollution, and nutrient runoff, resulting in turbid, marginal conditions in which only certain species can persist. Mortality effects are exacerbated by increasingly regular thermal stress events, leading to shifts towards novel communities dominated by habit...

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...

Truly sustainable development in a human-altered, fragmented marine environment subject to unprecedented climate change, demands informed planning strategies in order to be successful. Beyond a simple understanding of the distribution of marine species, data describing how variations in spatio-temporal dynamics impact ecosystem functioning and the...

Thermal refugia underpin climate-smart management of coral reefs, but whether current thermal refugia will remain so under future warming is uncertain. We use statistical downscaling to provide the highest resolution thermal stress projections (0.01°/1 km, >230,000 reef pixels) currently available for coral reefs and identify future refugia on loca...

Localized stressors compound the ongoing climate‐driven decline of coral reefs, requiring natural resource managers to work with rapidly shifting paradigms. Trait‐based adaptive management (TBAM) is a new framework to help address changing conditions by choosing and implementing management actions specific to species groups that share key traits, v...

This chapter presents a general overview of climate change trends, impacts, and climate-resilient marine conservation policy in Indonesia. We introduce the ways in which the Government of Indonesia (GoI) can address the growing threat from climate change-via climate change mitigation, adaptation, and building social-ecological resilience. Building...

Invasive macroalgae represent a major threat to marine ecosystems worldwide. Codium fragile ssp. fragile is one of the most invasive species in the world. The species has deleterious impacts on marine ecosystems, but can also coexist with other Codium congeners, with neutral impact. Several invasive macroalgae have been described to occur along the...

The current exposure of species assemblages to high environmental variability may grant them resilience to future increases in climatic variability. In globally threatened coral reef ecosystems, management seeks to protect resilient reefs within variable environments. Yet, our lack of understanding for the determinants of coral population performan...

Aim Intraspecific diversity is a significant component of adaptive potential, and thus, it is important to identify the evolutionary processes that have and will continue to shape the molecular diversity of natural populations. This study aims to untangle the possible drivers of intraspecific molecular diversity by testing whether patterns of histo...

paragraph Accelerating rates of biodiversity loss underscore the need to understand how species achieve resilience –their ability to resist and recover from a/biotic disturbances. Yet, the factors determining the resilience of species remain poorly understood, due to disagreements on its definition and the lack of large-scale analyses. Here, we inv...

Anthropocene coral reefs are faced with increasingly severe marine heatwaves and mass coral bleaching mortality events. The ensuing demographic changes to coral assemblages can have long-term impacts on reef community organisation. Thus, understanding the dynamics of subtropical scleractinian coral populations is essential to predict their recovery...

Predicting the viability of species exposed to increasing climatic stress requires an appreciation for the mechanisms underpinning the success or failure of marginal populations. Rather than traditional metrics of long-term population performance, here we illustrate that short-term ( i . e . transient) demographic characteristics, including measure...

Coral communities are threatened by an increasing plethora of abiotic and biotic disturbances. Preventing the ensuing loss of coral coverage and diversity calls for a mechanistic understanding of resilience across coral species and populations that is currently lacking in coral reef science. Assessments into the dynamics of coral populations typica...

Characterising and predicting species responses to anthropogenic global change is one of the key challenges in contemporary ecology and conservation. The sensitivity of marine species to climate change is increasingly being described with forecasted species distributions, yet these rarely account for population level processes such as genomic varia...

Yusuf S, Beger M, Tassakka ACMAR, Brauwer MD, Pricella A, Rahmi, Umar W, Limmon GV, Moore AM, Jompa J. 2021. Cross shelf gradients of scleractinian corals in the Spermonde Islands, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Biodiversitas 22: 1415-1423. Coral reef ecosystems around the world have suffered extensive degradation, including the reefs of the Wallacea r...

Global warming is irrevocably changing coastal marine communities, resulting in community reorganizations that favour generalist fishes that are able to associate with degraded or novel habitats.

Broad-scale studies and regional comparisons of Indonesia’s coral reefs are critical given the relative lack of information about these large, diverse, and threatened ecosystems. Most studies on reef benthic composition and distribution have largely focused on rather short transects spanning relatively small areas. Here, we quantify the shallow lar...

Climate change is causing the decline of coral reef ecosystems globally. Recent research highlights the importance of reducing CO 2 emissions in combination with implementing local management actions to support reef health and recovery, particularly actions that protect sites which are more resilient to extreme events. Resilience assessments quanti...