MCR LTER: Coral Reefs: Stegastes behavior data in support of Kamath, et al., Oikos 2019

Stable between-group differences in collective behavior have been documented in a variety of social taxa.
Here we evaluate the effects of such variation, often termed collective or colony-level personality, on
coral recovery in a tropical marine farmerfish system. Groups of the farmerfish Stegastes nigricans cultivate and defend gardens of palatable algae on coral reefs in the Indo-Pacific. These gardens can
promote the recruitment, growth, and survival of corals by providing a refuge from coral predation.
Here we experimentally evaluate whether the collective defensive behavior of farmerfish colonies is
correlated across intruder feeding guilds—herbivores, corallivores and egg-eating predators. Further,
we evaluate if overall colony responsiveness or situation-specific responsiveness (i.e., towards herbivores,
corallivores, or egg-eaters in particular) best predicts the growth of outplanted corals. Finally, we
experimentally manipulated communities within S. nigricans gardens, adding either macroalgae or large
colonies of coral, to assess if farmerfish behavior changes in response to the communities they occupy.
Between-group differences in collective responsiveness were repeatable across intruder guilds. Despite
this consistency, responsiveness towards corallivores (porcupinefish and ornate butterflyfish) was a
better predictor of outplanted coral growth than responsiveness towards herbivores or egg-eaters. Adding
large corals to farmerfish gardens increased farmerfish attacks towards intruders, pointing to possible
positive feedback loops between their aggression towards intruders and the presence of corals whose growth
they facilitate. These data provide evidence that among-group behavioral variation could strongly influence
the ecological properties of whole communities. These data support the publication
Kamath, A., J. N. Pruitt, A.J. Brooks, M.C Ladd, D.T. Cook, J.P. Gallagher, M.E. Vickers, S.J. Holbrook and R.J. Schmitt. 2019. Potential feedback between coral presence and farmerfish collective behavior promotes coral recovery. Oikos 128:482-492.
doi:10.1111/oik.05854 This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under
Grant No. OCE 16-37396 (and earlier awards) as well as a generous gift from the Gordon and
Betty Moore Foundation. Research was completed under permits issued by the French Polynesian
Government (Délégation à la Recherche) and the Haut-commissariat de la République en
Polynésie Francaise (DTRT) (Protocole d'Accueil 2005-2018). This work represents a
contribution of the Moorea Coral Reef (MCR) LTER Site.