Summary of impacts of canopy loss and disturbance on ecosystem structure after 3–6 months.

C = Canopy, D = Disturbance, CD = Canopy x Disturbance interaction. For community analyses (PERMANOVA), a ‘+’ symbol indicates any significant difference in community structure. For univariate measures, a ‘+’ symbol indicates a significant positive effect of applying the treatment (e.g. removal of canopy increases taxon richness), ‘−’ symbol indicates a significant negative effect of applying the treatment (e.g. disturbance reduces taxon richness). For CD, a ‘−’ symbol indicates that loss of canopy reduced stability (i.e. increased impact of disturbance) and a ‘+’ symbol indicates that loss of canopy increased stability (i.e. reduced impact of disturbance). In each case, no symbol indicates no significant result and ‘na’ indicates data unavailable. ‘Sessile’ refers to sessile invertebrates, ‘%’ refers to percentage cover, ‘Mobile’ refers to mobile invertebrates, ‘No.’ refers to number per quadrat. At Roscoff only presence-absence data were recorded, so only richness was analysed.1in absence of disturbance only.