Fig. 2: Deoxygenation event effects on coral bleaching and community structure.

a Box plot of Agaricia tenuifolia symbiont densities during the deoxygenation event, with colony means overlaid as black dots (N = 6 biologically independent colony replicates). The center line indicates the median, the box limits the interquartile range, and the whiskers the minimum and maximum values. The black arrow indicates more coral bleaching with decreasing symbiont densities. Differences between sites were evaluated with linear mixed effects models with site as a fixed effect and colony as a random effect (p = 2.143e⁻⁰⁸). b Percent cover of all coral substrate for each coral genus and health condition (L—live, B—bleached, PB—partially bleached, D—dead) at the impacted site 4 months before, during, and 1 year after the event from permanent photoquadrat surveys. c nMDS plots showing benthic community assemblages at the impacted site for all functional groups and d for only the coral assemblage. Ellipses indicate the 95% confidence interval around the mean assemblage before (blue), during (red), and after (green) the event. Vectors indicate significant contributions of functional groups (p < 0.05). e nMDS of the benthic community at the reference site, showing no change during the study.