Catastrophic regime shifts in coral communities exposed to physical disturbances: Simulation results from object-oriented 3-dimensional coral reef model

A 3-dimensional individual-based model, the ReefModel, was developed to simulate the dynamical structure of coral reef community using object-oriented techniques. Interactions among functional groups of reef organisms were simulated in the model. The behaviours of these organisms were described with simple mechanistic rules that were derived from their general behaviours (e.g. growing habits, competitive mechanisms, response to physical disturbance) observed in natural coral reef communities. The model was implemented to explore the effects of physical disturbance on the dynamical structure of a 3-coral community that was characterized with three functional coral groups: tabular coral, foliaceous coral and massive coral. Simulation results suggest that (i) the integration of physical disturbance and differential responses (disturbance sensitivity and growing habit) of corals plays an important role in structuring coral communities; (ii) diversity of coral communities can be maximal under intermediate level of acute physical disturbance; (iii) multimodality exists in the final states and dynamic regimes of individual coral group as well as coral community structure, which results from the influence of small random spatial events occurring during the interactions among the corals in the community, under acute and repeated physical disturbances. These results suggest that alternative stable states and catastrophic regime shifts may exist in a coral community under unstable physical environment.