%0 Journal Article
%T Detailed Food Web Networks of Three Greater Antillean Coral Reef Systems: The Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica
%A Peter D. Roopnarine
%A Rachel Hertog
%J Dataset Papers in Science
%D 2013
%R 10.7167/2013/857470
%X Food webs represent one of the most complex aspects of community biotic interactions. Complex food webs are represented as networks of interspecific interactions, where nodes represent species or groups of species, and links are predator-prey interactions. This paper presents reconstructions of coral reef food webs in three Greater Antillean regions of the Caribbean: the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica. Though not taxonomically comprehensive, each food web nevertheless comprises producers and consumers, single-celled and multicellular organisms, and species foraging on reefs and adjacent seagrass beds. Species are grouped into trophic guilds if their prey and predator links are indistinguishable. The data list guilds, taxonomic composition, prey guilds/species, and predators. Primary producer and invertebrate richness are regionally uniform, but vertebrate richness varies on the basis of more detailed occurrence data. Each region comprises 169 primary producers, 513 protistan and invertebrate consumer species, and 159, 178, and 170 vertebrate species in the Cayman Islands, Cuba, and Jamaica, respectively. Caribbean coral reefs are among the world's most endangered by anthropogenic activities. The datasets presented here will facilitate comparisons of historical and regional variation, the assessment of impacts of species loss and invasion, and the application of food webs to ecosystem analyses. 1. Introduction Coral reef communities of the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea have a long history of anthropogenic disturbance, driven by the exploitation for food of both vertebrate and invertebrate species [1, 2]. More recently, coral bleaching, storm effects, coral disease, coastal development, pollution, invasive species, and a reduction of herbivorous control of algae in spatial competition with coral [3] have resulted in dramatic declines of diversity and abundance on reefs throughout the region [4¨C6]. The ongoing and predicted increases of seawater temperature and acidification as consequences of anthropogenic global warming make coral reefs among the most endangered ocean ecosystems, and Greater Antillean reefs may be particularly vulnerable because of their past and recent histories of perturbation [7]. It is therefore increasingly important to integrate species-level data on systematics, ecology, and biogeography into systems-level data that are informative to regional conservation and management efforts. Here we use food web networks, in close regional proximity, to represent one important aspect of species ecology and present regional
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/dpis/2013/857470/