Protection of coral reef fish delivers ecosystem-critical biocontrol of coral-eating starfish across the Great Barrier Reef

Crown-of-thorns starfish (CoTS, Acanthaster ssp.) are regarded as a pest species across the Indo-Pacific, where they are voracious predators of corals and represent one of the largest causes of coral mortality on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). We have incorporated reef fish into a metacommunity model known as the Coral Community Network (CoCoNet) model for the GBR to demonstrate the critical role that marine reserves and other fisheries regulations have played in limiting the prevalence of CoTS outbreaks and maintaining the resilience of the GBR ecosystem. This submission includes the CoCoNet model user-guide, the CoCoNet code (developed in NetLogo), coastline and reef definition files needed to run the model, and model output files (.csv) generated by the study. Each output file includes variables for each reef, in each year (annual timestep), for each run within an ensemble (runs within an ensemble vary stochastically to capture uncertainty)., , # Protection of coral reef fish delivers ecosystem-critical biocontrol of coral-eating starfish across the Great Barrier Reef

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.ns1rn8q4n](10.5061/dryad.ns1rn8q4n)

## Description of the data and file structure

The data consists the CoCoNet model, supporting data files, documentation files, and model output files run for a range of interventions on the Great Barrier Reef related to biocontrol strategies such as conservation of predatory fish and manual control of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish. 

### Files and variables

#### File: CoCoNet-user-guide-and-technical-summary-v3.4.docx

**Description:** User guide for setting up and running the CoCoNet model. This includes links for downloading NetLogo multi-agent programmable modelling environment.

#### File: CoCoNet_V3_biocontrol.nlogo

**Description:** Code and graphical user interface for the CoCoNet model.

#### File: coastline.csv

**Description:** Low resolution coastline file used by the CoCoNet m...,