Testing the grouper biocontrol hypothesis: A response to Mumby et al. 2013

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1 Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States
2 Department of Marine Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
3 Department of Zoology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA
4 Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
5 REEF, Key Largo, FL, USA
6 Reef Environmental Education Foundation, Key Largo, FL, USA
7 Department of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
8 Dial Cordy & Associates, Miami, FL, USA
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.139v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science, Biodiversity, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Marine Biology
Keywords
lionfish, biotic resistance, coral reef, invasive, predator, management, null model, invasion biology
Copyright
© 2013 Bruno et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Cite this article
Bruno JF, Valdivia A, Hackerott S, Cox CE, Green S, Côté I, Akins L, Layman C, Precht W. 2013. Testing the grouper biocontrol hypothesis: A response to Mumby et al. 2013. PeerJ PrePrints 1:e139v1

Abstract

Biotic resistance is the idea that native species negatively affect the invasion success of introduced species. We tested the hypothesis that native grouper are controlling the abundance of exotic lionfish on Caribbean coral reefs by assessing the relationship between the density and biomass of lionfish and native predators at 71 reefs in three biogeographic regions. Our results indicated that: (a) the abundance of lionfish and large grouper are not negatively related, and (b) lionfish abundance is controlled by a number of physical site characteristics, and possibly by culling. Taken together, our results suggest that managers cannot rely on native grouper populations to control the lionfish invasion. Mumby et al. (2013) objected to several aspects of our analysis and conclusions. Here we address their criticisms and argue that our original conclusions are valid.