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High Complexity Food Webs in Low-diversity Eastern Pacific Reef–Coral Communities

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Abstract

Community-wide feeding interrelationships in a low-diversity coral reef off the Pacific coast of Panamá (Uva Island reef) demonstrate complex pathways involving herbivore, strong corallivore, and carnivore interactions. Four trophic levels with 31 interguild links are identified in a generalized food web, and documented feeding interrelationships with 287+ species links are portrayed in a coral–corallivore subweb. The importance of trophic groups changes greatly with time, from unknown causes over annual to decadal-scale periods, and during very strong El Niño–Southern Oscillation events such that intermittent intense herbivory by echinoids (Diadema) and corallivory by gastropod mollusks, the crown-of-thorns sea star Acanthaster, hermit crabs, and fishes result in high levels of coral mortality and bioerosion of reef substratum. Intraregional differences in species composition and abundances affecting food-web interactions are briefly described for nonupwelling (Uva Island) and upwelling areas (Pearl Islands) in Panamá. Seasonal upwelling in the Pearl Islands results in high plankton productivity, which likely augments production in invertebrates, fishes, marine mammals, and seabirds, but these pathways still remain largely unquantified. The corallivore Acanthaster is absent from upwelling centers in Panamá and from upwelling and nonupwelling areas in the southern and central Galápagos Islands, and the highly destructive, facultative corallivore Eucidaris galapagensis occurs only in the latter offshore islands and at Cocos Island. Relatively recent declines in the abundances of manta rays, sharks, and spiny lobsters are correlated with, but not necessarily causally linked to, increasing fishing activities in the late 1970s to early 1980s. The extent to which the complex yet highly unstable Uva Island food web is representative of other eastern Pacific coral reef ecosystems remains to be investigated.

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Acknowledgements

Studies contributing to this article were made possible by support from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the National Geographic Society, and the National Science Foundation (Biological Oceanography Program). I thank the following Panamanian authorities for permission to work in their territorial waters: Recursos Marinos, INRENARE (Instituto Nacional de Recursos Naturales Renovables) and the Parque Nacional de Coiba. For logistical support and permission to carry out research in the Galápagos Islands, I am grateful to the staff of the Charles Darwin Research Station and the Galápagos National Park Service. Comments by P. Fong, H. M. Guzmán, N. Idrisi, D. Lirman, T. R. McClanahan, and H. Reyes Bonilla have helped to clarify several topics addressed in this article. A. L. Hazra and D. Lirman kindly helped to produce the food-web graphics. Finally, I thank T. R. McClanahan for the invitation to address coral reef trophic relationships in the eastern Pacific and for his helpful critique of this contribution.

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  1. Division of Marine Biology and Fisheries, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, Florida 33149, USA

    Peter W. Glynn

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Glynn, P. High Complexity Food Webs in Low-diversity Eastern Pacific Reef–Coral Communities. Ecosystems 7, 358–367 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-004-0184-x

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