The overall performance of the management strategies including cumulative effects of climate and ocean change for the scaled integrated (composite) performance measures (scaled as in Fig 3).

<p>LBSP is land-based sources of pollution (i.e. additional sediments and nutrients).</p

Projected biomass trajectories of (<i>grey line</i>) massive corals and (<i>black line</i>) branching corals under four fisheries management scenarios, no land-based sources of pollution, and projected climate change impacts (ocean acidification and ocean warming) under the IPCC AR5 RCP8.5 emission scenarios.

<p>All simulated scenarios projected the same trend in coral biomass resulting in the overlay of biomass trajectories for branching and massive corals. The scenarios simulated were status quo with no LBSP, size limit and TAC with no LBSP, full regulation, and no fishing and no LBSP (no stressors).</p

Goals, ecosystem metrics and performance criteria.

<p>Performance of the alternative strategies was based on reaching the criteria of conservation ecosystem metrics (#1–3) and extraction ecosystem metrics (#4a, b). Criteria were based on a simulation of no local (fishing and land-based sources of pollution) or global (climate change) stressors. The criteria for landings are the total catches from the status quo simulation.</p

Spatial structure of the Guam Atlantis model based on homogeneous biophysical characteristics.

<p>Polygons closest to shore have one depth layer (0–6 m) and the others two (0–6 m and 6–30 m for the middle ones and 0–6 m and 6–100 m for the 7 outer, boundary polygons). Blue polygons indicate marine preserves. The star in the inset map represents the location of Guam located in the Mariana Archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. Polygons with nutrient and/or sediment inputs are those numbered 3, 7, 8, 10, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 26, 30, 32, 48, 49, 52, and 53. (Figure taken with permission from [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0152577#pone.0152577.ref026" target="_blank">26</a>]).</p

Age-class distributions of (<i>left</i>) target invertivorous fish (e.g. goat fish, snapper, wrasse), (<i>middle</i>) humphead wrasse and (<i>right</i>) target browsers (e.g. unicornfish) at the end of 40 year simulation of different management scenarios.

<p>The “No Stressors” scenario indicates no fishing and no land-based sources of pollution (LBSP). The scenario “Size Limit & TAC & no LBSP” had similar results as the “Size Limit & TAC” scenario and is therefore left out for clarity. The “Full Regulation” scenario is comprised of size limit, TAC, MPAs and no LBSP.</p

Decision table of seven management scenarios based on weightings of performance metrics.

<p>Mean normalized results of ecosystem metrics used in performance evaluation of alternative management scenarios with regards to the ecosystem status (goals # 1–3) and socio-economic conditions (metrics # 4a,b). Results for each metric (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0152577#pone.0152577.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>, <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0152577#pone.0152577.g003" target="_blank">Fig 3</a>) were scaled between zero (worst) and one (best). LBSP is land-based sources of pollution. Bold values are highest (best) values per row.</p

Bray-Curtis similarity indices for all pairwise comparisons between localities.

<p>FFS corresponds to French Frigate Shoals, Hawaii. The values were obtained by pooling all samples at each site and calculating the between site Bray-Curtis Index value, yielding one value for each pairwise by site comparison.</p

Individual-based rarefaction curves for the seven localities investigated (FFS corresponds to French Frigate Shoals, Hawaii) depicting the number of species recorded as a function of the number of individuals sequenced.

<p>For Heron Island, dead coral heads and artificial settlement structures (ARMS) are plotted both separately and combined.</p

Sampling localities in the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean.

<p>Sampling localities in the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean.</p

Estimated diversity values for seven sampled localities using the Abundance based Coverage Estimator (ACE) and Chao1 (+/− lower and higher bound of 95% confidence interval).

<p>A- Estimated diversity based on all samples. B- Comparable analysis restricted to six samples from each locality (in order to minimize the effect of different numbers of samples), randomized a thousand times. (FFS corresponds to French Frigate Shoals, Hawaii).</p