A pronounced, widespread and persistent regime shift among marine ecosystems is observable on temperate rocky reefs as a result of sea urchin overgrazing. Here, we empirically define regime-shift dynamics for this grazing system which transitions between productive macroalgal beds and impoverished urchin barrens. Catastrophic in nature, urchin overgrazing in a well-studied Australian system demonstrates a discontinuous regime shift, which is of particular management concern as recovery of desirable macroalgal beds requires reducing grazers to well below the initial threshold of overgrazing. Generality of this regime-shift dynamic is explored across 13 rocky reef systems (spanning 11 different regions from both hemispheres) by compiling available survey data (totalling 10 901 quadrats surveyed in situ ) plus experimental regime-shift responses (observed during a total of 57 in situ manipulations). The emergent and globally coherent pattern shows urchin grazing to cause a discontinuous ‘catastrophic’ regime shift, with hysteresis effect of approximately one order of magnitude in urchin biomass between critical thresholds of overgrazing and recovery. Different life-history traits appear to create asymmetry in the pace of overgrazing versus recovery. Once shifted, strong feedback mechanisms provide resilience for each alternative state thus defining the catastrophic nature of this regime shift. Importantly, human-derived stressors can act to erode resilience of desirable macroalgal beds while strengthening resilience of urchin barrens, thus exacerbating the risk, spatial extent and irreversibility of an unwanted regime shift for marine ecosystems.

Anthropogenic drivers are flattening reef structure from 3-dimensional habitats composed of macroalgae and live branching corals towards low-profile turfing algae. Our current understanding of the consequences of widespread reef degradation currently fails to consider the responses of small mobile invertebrates (‘epifauna’) to patterns of change amongst reef structural elements (‘microhabitats’). Here, the taxonomic composition of 152 epifaunal assemblages was compared among 21 structurally diverse benthic microhabitats across an Australian temperate to tropical climatic gradient, spanning 28.6 degrees in latitude from Tasmania to the northern Great Barrier Reef. Epifauna varied consistently with different microhabitat types, and to a much lesser extent with latitude. Macroalgae, live branching coral and turfing algae represented 3 extremes for epifaunal community structure, with most microhabitats possessing epifaunal assemblages intermediate between these endpoints. Amongst structural characteristics, epifauna related primarily to the degree of branching and hardness of microhabitats. Mobile invertebrate communities are likely to transform in predictable ways with the collapse of large erect macroalgae and live coral towards low-lying turf-associated communities.

Changes in invertebrate body size-distributions that follow loss of habitat-forming species can potentially affect a range of ecological processes, including predation and competition. In the marine environment, small crustaceans and other mobile invertebrates ('epifauna') represent a basal component in reef food webs, with a pivotal secondary production role that is strongly influenced by their body size-distribution. Ongoing degradation of reef habitats that affect invertebrate size-distributions, particularly transformation of coral and kelp habitat to algal turf, may thus fundamentally affect secondary production. Here we explored variation in size spectra of shallow epifaunal assemblages (i.e. the slope and intercept of the linear relationship between log abundance and body size at the assemblage level) across 21 reef microhabitats distributed along an extensive eastern Australian climatic gradient from the tropical northern Great Barrier Reef to cool temperate Tasmania. When aggregated across microhabitats at the site scale, invertebrate body size spectra (0.125-8 mm range) were consistently log-linear (R 2 ranging 0.87-0.98). Size spectra differed between, but not within, major groups of microhabitats, and exhibited little variability between tropical and temperate biomes. Nevertheless, size spectra showed significant tropical/temperate differences in slopes for epifauna sampled on macroalgal habitats, and in elevation for soft coral and sponge habitats. Our results reveal epifaunal size spectra to be a highly predictable macro-ecological feature. Given that variation in epifaunal size spectra among groups of microhabitats was greater than variation between tropical and temperate biomes, we postulate that ocean warming will not greatly alter epifaunal size spectra directly. However, transformation of tropical coral and temperate macroalgal habitats to algal turfs due to warming will alter reef food web dynamics through redistribution of the size of prey available to fishes.

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