Fig. 4: Marine reserve effects on fish functional groups pre- and post- bleaching.

Points are the mean difference in biomass between protected and fished areas, with drop-one jackknife error bars representing the uncertainty in reserve effects attributable to individual reef sites. a Higher fish biomass in marine reserves pre-bleaching was primarily driven by mixed-diet carnivores, and piscivores, with smaller contributions from scrapers & excavators and grazers. All groups had higher biomass in the 9 reserves compared to 12 fished reefs. b On the 12 reefs that recovered coral cover following major bleaching, higher biomass in reserves compared to fished areas was now dominated by scraper and excavator fish, followed by mixed-diet carnivores. Several functional groups show no reserve effect. c On the nine reefs that underwent regime shifts to macroalgae, the greatest biomass difference between fished and protected reefs was for macroalgal browsing fish, followed by scraper & excavator and grazer groups. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.