Abstract
In the past 15 years, restoration practitioners in Florida have grown and planted 10,000s of Acropora cervicornis (staghorn) corals onto degraded reefs. Up to now, the success of these restoration efforts has been primarily evaluated based on the survivorship and growth of outplanted colonies. While these metrics are important for species recovery, they fail to encompass the range of potential benefits that restoration can have at an ecosystem level. In this study, I assess the impacts of coral restoration by comparing community-level metrics among restored sites/plots, natural staghorn thickets, and unrestored sites. I examine fish herbivory, epifaunal recruitment, and carbonate budgets at seven reef sites in Miami-Dade County. Three years after the initial outplanting, restoration at the surveyed sites was successful in terms of colony-based metrics; restored plots had 56.7% (± 25.3) colony survivorship, a shift in size frequency distribution towards large staghorn colonies, and 7.1% (± 9.8) cover. In addition, after three years, restored plots have higher rates of herbivory (p < 0.05) than control plots, positive net rates of accretion (4.33 kg CaCO3 m-2 yr-1 ± 2.35) compared to negative net accretion rates in unrestored plots and reefs, and influence the relative abundance of distinct epifaunal communities (i.e., Annelids, Brachyura, Amphipoda), indicating that restoration benefits go well beyond colony deployment and survivorship. While restored plots did not match the levels seen in wild staghorn thickets sites based on these ecosystem metrics, coral restoration is succeeding in reestablishing important components of Acropora reef communities. This study serves as a framework for expanding the scope of coral restoration from small scale to ecological scale, a transition that is critical to the successful application of coral restoration to enhance reef resilience.