Combining agent-based, trait-based and demographic approaches to model coral-community dynamics
- University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, Canada
- Nova Blue Environment, France
- Flinders University, Australia
Abstract
The complexity of coral-reef ecosystems makes it challenging to predict their dynamics and resilience under future disturbance regimes. Models for coral-reef dynamics do not adequately account for the high functional diversity exhibited by corals. Models that are ecologically and mechanistically detailed are therefore required to simulate the ecological processes driving coral reef dynamics. Here we describe a novel model that includes processes at different spatial scales, and the contribution of species’ functional diversity to benthic-community dynamics. We calibrated and validated the model to reproduce observed dynamics using empirical data from Caribbean reefs. The model exhibits realistic community dynamics, and individual population dynamics are ecologically plausible. A global sensitivity analysis revealed that the number of larvae produced locally, and interaction-induced reductions in growth rate are the parameters with the largest influence on community dynamics. The model provides a platform for virtual experiments to explore diversity-functioning relationships in coral reefs.
Data availability
All data generated and associated scripts have been deposited in OSF under the DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/CTQ43.
-
Data from: The future of evolutionary diversity in reef coralsDryad, doi:10.5061/dryad.178n3.
Article and author information
Author details
Bruno Sylvain Carturan
Corey J. A. Bradshaw
Funding
Canada Foundation for Innovation (Leaders Opportunity Fund,23065)
- Jason Pither
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN,2019-05190)
- Lael Parrott
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN,2014-04176)
- Jason Pither
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2020, Carturan et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 2,339
- views
-
- 397
- downloads
-
- 9
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Combining agent-based, trait-based and demographic approaches to model coral-community dynamics
eLife 9:e55993.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.55993
Further reading
-
- Computational and Systems Biology
- Genetics and Genomics
Obesity is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension. Intriguingly, there is a subset of metabolically healthy obese (MHO) individuals who are seemingly able to maintain a healthy metabolic profile free of metabolic syndrome. The molecular underpinnings of MHO, however, are not well understood. Here, we report that CTRP10/C1QL2-deficient mice represent a unique female model of MHO. CTRP10 modulates weight gain in a striking and sexually dimorphic manner. Female, but not male, mice lacking CTRP10 develop obesity with age on a low-fat diet while maintaining an otherwise healthy metabolic profile. When fed an obesogenic diet, female Ctrp10 knockout (KO) mice show rapid weight gain. Despite pronounced obesity, Ctrp10 KO female mice do not develop steatosis, dyslipidemia, glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, oxidative stress, or low-grade inflammation. Obesity is largely uncoupled from metabolic dysregulation in female KO mice. Multi-tissue transcriptomic analyses highlighted gene expression changes and pathways associated with insulin-sensitive obesity. Transcriptional correlation of the differentially expressed gene (DEG) orthologs in humans also shows sex differences in gene connectivity within and across metabolic tissues, underscoring the conserved sex-dependent function of CTRP10. Collectively, our findings suggest that CTRP10 negatively regulates body weight in females, and that loss of CTRP10 results in benign obesity with largely preserved insulin sensitivity and metabolic health. This female MHO mouse model is valuable for understanding sex-biased mechanisms that uncouple obesity from metabolic dysfunction.
-
- Computational and Systems Biology
Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) is a powerful technology used to define the spatial distribution and relative abundance of metabolites across tissue cryosections. While software packages exist for pixel-by-pixel individual metabolite and limited target pairs of ratio imaging, the research community lacks an easy computing and application tool that images any metabolite abundance ratio pairs. Importantly, recognition of correlated metabolite pairs may contribute to the discovery of unanticipated molecules in shared metabolic pathways. Here, we describe the development and implementation of an untargeted R package workflow for pixel-by-pixel ratio imaging of all metabolites detected in an MSI experiment. Considering untargeted MSI studies of murine brain and embryogenesis, we demonstrate that ratio imaging minimizes systematic data variation introduced by sample handling, markedly enhances spatial image contrast, and reveals previously unrecognized metabotype-distinct tissue regions. Furthermore, ratio imaging facilitates identification of novel regional biomarkers and provides anatomical information regarding spatial distribution of metabolite-linked biochemical pathways. The algorithm described herein is applicable to any MSI dataset containing spatial information for metabolites, peptides or proteins, offering a potent hypothesis generation tool to enhance knowledge obtained from current spatial metabolite profiling technologies.
