Scatter-plots showing relationships between human population size and fish biomass (top panels) and average fish weight (bottom panels) for selected fish groups across the Caribbean.

<p>Selected fish groups are a) snappers (n = 226), b) groupers (n = 260), c) highly valued commercial species (n = 269), and c) parrotfishes (n = 274). Spearman rank correlation coefficients between human population size and the fish metrics are shown, along with the corresponding adjusted degrees of freedom and p-values. Loess smoother black dotted lines were fitted to the data to help visualize trends. All variables have been fourth-root transformed before plotting (thus, all axes are plotted on a fourth-root transformed scale), but numbers shown on axes represent back-transformed values. See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0086291#pone.0086291.s001" target="_blank">Table S1</a> for details on species making up these fish groups.</p

Summary statistics for fish biomass (grams per 100 m²), fish density (fish per 100 m²) and average fish weight (grams per fish) for different fish groups across reef-surveys allocated to two categories of protection effectiveness against fishing.

<p>Snappers (SNP), groupers (GRP), highly valued commercial species (COM) and parrotfishes (PAR). n- number of surveys in which the fish group was present; Percent – percentage of surveys in which the fish group was present; sd-standard deviation. Only data of surveys under the Unprotected/Unknown protection status (left columns) were used in correlation analyses with human population size. See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0086291#pone.0086291.s001" target="_blank">Table S1</a> for details on species making up these fish groups.</p

Box-and-whisker plots comparing a) fish biomass, b) fish density and c) average fish weight between reef sites fully/partially protected from fishing (white boxes) and sites unprotected or of unknown protection status (grey boxes) throughout the Caribbean region for snappers (SNP), groupers (GRP), highly valued commercial species (COM) and parrotfishes (PAR).

<p>Dots on bottom and top of whiskers represent 5 and 95 percentiles, respectively. All fish metrics have been fourth-root transformed before plotting (thus, vertical axes are plotted on a fourth-root transformed scale), but numbers shown on axes represent back-transformed values. mns- indicates marginally non-significant difference (p<0.1) between protection categories. *-indicates significant difference (p<0.05) between protection categories for a given fish group. See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0086291#pone.0086291.s001" target="_blank">Table S1</a> for details on species making up these fish groups.</p

Scatter-plots showing relationships between human population size and fish density for selected fish groups across the Caribbean (top panels) and the coefficient of variation, a measure inversely related to precision, associated with the fish density estimates for each fish group (bottom panels).

<p>Selected fish groups are a) snappers (n = 226), b) groupers (n = 260), c) highly valued commercial species (n = 269), and c) parrotfishes (n = 274). Spearman rank correlation coefficients between human population size and the fish metrics are shown, along with the corresponding adjusted degrees of freedom and p-values. Loess smoother black lines were fitted to the data to help visualize trends. Horizontal lines in bottom panels indicate the average coefficient of variation for the fish density estimates of each fish group across all surveys. Fish densities and human population size have been fourth-root transformed before plotting (thus, these axes are plotted on a fourth-root transformed scale), but numbers shown on axes represent back-transformed values. See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0086291#pone.0086291.s001" target="_blank">Table S1</a> for details on species making up these fish groups.</p

Relationships between human population size and average fish weight and relative fish density of individual parrotfish species across the Caribbean.

<p>a) Spearman rank correlation coefficients (+95% one-tailed upper confidence interval; black circles) between human population size and the average fish weight for eight frequently occurring parrotfish species across the Caribbean; the correlation coefficients are ordered as a function maximum body length for each species (as reported by <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0086291#pone.0086291-Robertson1" target="_blank">[41]</a>); grey line illustrates the relationship between the magnitude of the correlation coefficients and body size; the eight correlation values were incorporated into one summary correlation coefficient (+95% one-tailed confidence interval; black square); see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0086291#pone-0086291-t005" target="_blank">Table 5</a> for number of reef-surveys included in the correlation analysis for each species. b) Plot illustrating fish density scores of eight frequently occurring parrotfish species along one redundancy analysis axis representing a gradient of human population size; the species scores were obtained by constraining the species composition of the parrotfish assemblage by human population size across the Caribbean region; the size of the circles representing the species is proportional to the maximum body length of each species (n = 274 reef-surveys).</p

Summary statistics for average fish weight (grams per fish), fish density (fish per 100 m²) and fish biomass (grams per 100 m²) of eight frequently occurring parrotfish species across reef-surveys with Unprotected/unknown protection status (n = 274).

<p>n- number of reef-surveys where the species was present; sd-standard deviation. These data were used in species-level correlation analyses with human population size and in the redundancy analysis (RDA) linking parrotfish community composition to human population size. Species are ordered by decreasing order of occurrence across surveys. Note that no species occurred across all the 274 fish surveys.</p

Sampling batch ID, location, year code, average latitude and longitude (decimal degrees) coordinates and number (n) of Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment (AGRRA) surveys included in the analyses.

<p>Sampling batch ID, location, year code, average latitude and longitude (decimal degrees) coordinates and number (n) of Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment (AGRRA) surveys included in the analyses.</p

Percentage of Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment (AGRRA) fish surveys in 17 state/territories (as referred to by AGRRA) carried out in different coral reef habitats between 1997 and 2004 where parrotfishes were the dominant family in terms of biomass and where parrotfish biomass exceeded that of highly valued commercial fish groups.

<p>Parrotfish biomass (PAR), snapper biomass (SNP) and grouper biomass (GRP), and combined biomass of a selection of species (COM) considered by AGRRA to be “Commercially significant”, including snappers, groupers, grunts, triggerfishes and large labrids.</p

Total (above- and below-ground) biomass of the principal components of the community per sampling station grouped per site.

<p>Other grass: species of seagrass other than <i>Thalassia testudinum</i>, mostly <i>Syringodium filiforme</i>. Somatic (decalcified) above-ground weight of the calcareous algae is considered. The boxes and bars represent inter-annual variation, and stations with only one sampling event are excluded. The digits above the bars in the bottom graph indicate N (the number of sampling years). M median of fleshy algae at site 5-station 13. See legend of <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0090600#pone-0090600-g002" target="_blank">Fig. 2</a> for further explanation.</p

Significant long-term trends in seagrass attributes and community parameters at CARICOMP monitoring stations across the nine sites that showed changes consistent with deterioration of the environmental conditions.

<p>The broken smoothed lines connect annual average values and serve to illustrate the inter-annual variability in the data. Data from all samples per year (N = 4-9, <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0090600#pone.0090600.s005" target="_blank">Table S3</a>) were used to determine the regression lines (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0090600#pone.0090600.s008" target="_blank">Table S6</a>). D. For Site14, the relationship was determined for the more persistent <i>Syringodium filiforme</i>.</p