How can functional connectivity for multi-habitat-utilizing fish species be leveraged in support of marine habitat restoration design? Where should habitat restoration efforts be placed to best support and benefit from ecological interactions with multi-habitat-utilizing fishes (e.g., via herbivory, predation, nutrient deposition)? We addressed these questions in the context of linking coral reef restoration design to functional connectivity for two reef fish species whose ontogenetic habitat shifts connect mangrove & seagrass nurseries to offshore reefs in the Florida Keys, USA: gray snapper (Lutjanus griseus) and bluestriped grunt (Haemulon sciurus).
Specifically, we quantified potential functional connectivity for the migratory sub-adult life stage of gray snapper and bluestriped grunt at both local and seascape scales using spatial graph connectivity analyses informed by spatially explicit and species-specific habitat suitability models. After constructing minimum planar (spatial) graphs using the open-access Graphab Software, we used the resulting connectivity networks to evaluate and rank the contributions of candidate sites prioritized for restoration under a broad-scale, multi-million dollar (USD) coral reef restoration program recently established in the Florida Keys—Mission: Iconic Reefs—to seascape-wide connectivity for each of the focal species.
If you have questions about this research, want to know more about this work, or would like to request access to the large spatial data files produced in this project, please contact Courtney Stuart (@courtney.e.stuart@gmail.com or @courtney.stuart@mansfield.ox.ac.uk).
This repository is associated with the following papers:
Stuart, C. E., Wedding, L. M., Pittman, S. J., Serafy, J. E., Moura, A., Bruckner, A.W., & Green, S. J. (2023). Seascape connectivity modeling predicts potential hotspots of fish-derived nutrient provisioning to restored coral reefs. Marine Ecology Progress Series.
Stuart, C. E., Wedding, L. M., Pittman, S. J., & Green, S. J. (2021). Habitat Suitability Modeling to Inform Seascape Connectivity Conservation and Management. Diversity, 13(10), 465.
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