The increasingly important roles of herbivorous fish on coral reefs

A paper published recently highlights the importance of fish like Ctenochaetus striatus (the striated surgeonfish) to the resilience of coral reefs. In a rapidly changing climate, survival of coral reefs will rely on a number of factors, but certainly one of them is the ability of some groups of fish to keep reefs 'clean' enough for corals to settle and thrive. We are getting better at elucidating the functional roles of these important fish, but modern methods (such as metabarcoding for diet specificity) will allow us to understand fine details of these roles. Its a cool paper - take a look!