Adult corals enhance juvenile recruitment through cumulative ecological niche construction

Juvenile coral abundance at Jiigurru on the Great Barrier Reef increases additively with adult coral abundance and with fractal dimension, indicating assemblage-level niche construction.

• Why it matters: Adult reef structures can persist after colony death, potentially creating inherited habitat that shapes where juveniles recruit, but this assemblage-level mechanism is not well quantified.
• What they did: The study combined spatial coral censuses across >1300 quadrats, photogrammetric reef digital elevation models, and settlement-tile larval supply data from 15 reef sites at two time points.
• The result: Juvenile abundance rose on the log scale with adult abundance and fractal dimension, surface rugosity effects were weaker, adult–structure interactions were limited, and larval supply was negatively correlated.

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