Fig. 1: Calculated framework porosities for western Atlantic coral assemblages and impacts on reef accretion potential.

a, Framework porosity (%) for the seven types of coral assemblage examined (example images i–vii), as delineated by the dominant species or morphologies present. Vertical light-grey bands show proposed stacking porosity values for head-dominated, mixed head-and-branching-dominated and branching-dominated coral reef sequences proposed in previous studies³⁰. The dark-grey vertical line is the mean porosity value determined from TWA reef cores²⁰. b–e, Comparisons of calculated RAP_max rates using original framework porosity values³⁰ with those calculated here and applied to existing TWA reef budget data³. These consider differences across all TWA sites (b); differences between sites grouped into coral cover classes (c); differences between sites grouped into total net carbonate production classes (d); and differences across a range of sites (n = 6 per site) in Mexico that differ in their coral cover and coral assemblage type (e). Box plots depict median (horizontal line), mean (black cross) and first and third quartiles (box limits). Whiskers represent the 95th percentile. Sites outside the 95th percentile are shown as circles. Numbers above the plots indicate the change from previous estimates. Significance levels are from paired t-tests: NS, not significant (P > 0.05); *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. Numbers in parentheses are replicates per dataset.