Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-152).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-58). Also available via World Wide Web.

As coral reefs decline globally, there is an urgent need to understand recovery pathways and trajectories to both assess reef status and intervene with reef restoration efforts. However, the ecological role of various coral taxa on reef successional pathways is poorly understood. Building on terrestrial successional frameworks, it seems logical that weedy coral species may be placeholder species that quickly colonize cleared areas after a disturbance, but that are later replaced by more competitive, slower-growing species, leading to overall more biodiverse reefs. To test the competitive ability of a common pioneer species on Pacific reefs, Montipora aequituberculata, we tracked about 600 colonies across six equatorial islands through two time points (50 colonies per site per island), examining whether this species was more typically overgrown by other species over time, or whether M. aequituberculata was a more dominant competitor capable of overgrowing other reef taxa. Using photogrammetric data, we set out to answer questions about the fates of focal colonies and their place in the competitive hierarchy. Trajectories of area change of the focal colonies varied across islands, though they did not follow geographic patterns. Many of the changes in these post-disturbance reefs sometimes differed by site, even on the same island, and were not consistent within an archipelago. At an island scale, Howland (Phoenix Islands) and Flint (Line Islands) showed the greatest growth of focal colonies, while Enderbury (Phoenix) and Millennium (Line) lost the most coral coverage of focal colonies. Interactions between the focal colony and other coral species were more consistent across islands, with the most common interactions being with other colonies of M. aequituberculata as well as common species of Porites and Pocillopora. There was a consistent trend of focal colonies mostly being overgrown by other colonies of M. aequituberculata: this conspecific replacement suggests that this species is capable of self-perpetuating as a primary space holder in lieu of other coral interactions. In contrast, most other coral species were commonly overgrown by the focal M. aequituberculata, suggesting that M. aequituberculata is a strong competitor when vying for groundcover. Indeed, M. aequituberculata may be able to dominate reefs post-disturbance until stress-tolerant species take over. Surprisingly however, we did not see a consistent pattern of species interaction, meaning that there was not a single coral taxon that universally overgrew M. aequituberculata, suggesting that M. aequituberculata is a generalist competitor and is not a specialized facilitator of any one competitively dominant taxa. Islands with similar species interaction patterns are not the same islands with similar growth or loss patterns, suggesting that site-level ecological complexity overrules any general patterns of geography or species interactions. This study is among the first to provide detailed species interactions in a successional framework, paving the way for future studies to do the same in the hopes that we can predict the trajectory of reefs based on the community composition.

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