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Title: Juvenile corals underpin coral reef carbonate production after disturbance

J. Carlot*, M. Kayal, H. S. Lenihan, S. J. Brandl, J. M. Casey, M. Adjeroud, U. Cardini, A. Merciere, B. Espiau, D. R. Barneche, A. Rovere, L. Hédouin & V. Parravicini

Abstract: Sea-level rise is predicted to cause major damage to tropical coastlines. While coral reefs can act as natural barriers for ocean waves, their protection hinges on the ability of scleractinian corals to produce enough calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) to keep up with rising sea levels. As a consequence of intensifying disturbances, coral communities are changing rapidly, potentially reducing community-level CaCO₃ production. By combining colony-level physiology and long-term monitoring data, we show that reefs recovering from major disturbances can produce 40% more CaCO₃ than currently estimated due to the disproportionate contribution of juvenile corals. However, the buffering effect of highly productive juvenile corals is compromised by recruitment failures, which have been more frequently observed after large-scale, repeated bleaching events. While the size structure of corals can bolster a critical ecological function on reefs, climate change impacts on recruitment may undermine this buffering effect, thus further compromising the persistence of reefs and their provision of important ecosystem services.

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The current folders are:

1. R - This folder is including the main code for producing Figures 1 to 5 through currently 2 scripts. The first one is General_Script_NCC (Figure 1 to 4) and the second one is Script_Mohsen_Data to valorize the IPM outputs made by M. Kayal (Fig. 5)
2. Data - This folder is including all the data required for running both scripts NB: All the size population raw datasets have to be asked at Hunter S. Lehnihan (Pr. at Santa Barbara, United-States), Mehdi Adjeround (Pr. at IRD Perpignan, France) and Mohsen Kayal (Dr. at IRD Noumea, New Caledonia) - This folder is also including a sub-folder Models with both isometric and allometric models - Right now, the sub-folder "Predictions" is an overview of the Coral community size distributions campaign, launched 100 times and saved into a unique dataset. Because of the size of the folder, the unique dataset only is available. Please, take note that you can run the script anyway.
3. Results - This folder is including all the figures for the article submission (which is meaning, main figures 1 to 5 + All the supplementary figures)