CLEARING OF MACROALGAL CANOPIES MODIFIES BENTHIC MICROBIAL COMMUNITY AND PROMOTES CORAL RECRUITMENT

Here, by means of a field experiment, we investigated how the removal of macroalgal canopies favors coral recruitment and influences the structure of epilithic microscopic biofilms. We tested the hypothesis that the total removal of macroalgae would produce more drastic changes in the structure of the epilithic bacterial biofilm and would have greater positive effects on coral recruitment than the removal of macroalgal canopies alone (i.e. leaving the understorey macroalgal assemblage untouched)