Mechanisms linked to demographic, biogeographic, and food‐web processes thought to underpin community stability could be affected by habitat size, but the effects of habitat size on community stability remain relatively unknown. We investigated whether those habitat‐size‐dependent properties influenced community instability and vulnerability to perturbations caused by disturbance. This is particularly important given that huma...

In the face of increasing cumulative effects from human and natural disturbances, sustaining coral reefs will require a deeper understanding of the drivers of coral resilience in space and time. Here we develop a high‐resolution, spatially explicit model of coral dynamics on Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Our model accounts for biological, ecological and environmental processes, as well as spatial variation in water qua...

Climate change threatens coral reefs across the world. Intense bleaching has caused dramatic coral mortality in many tropical regions in recent decades, but less obvious chronic effects of temperature and other stressors can be equally threatening to the long‐term persistence of diverse coral‐dominated reef systems. Coral reefs persist if coral recovery rates equal or exceed average rates of mortality. While mortality from acu...