ABSTRACT

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) arewidely used to protect at-risk ecosystems. Thisstudy employed a combined method to quantify theprotection performance on coral reef habitats, integratingcoral morphology and topographic relief inthe rugosity index. In theWeizhouIsland reef in thenorthern South China Sea, after six years of protection,the no-take areas (NTAs) hosted a greater livecoral cover (11.7%) compared to the no-protectionareas (NPAs, 6.9%), but had a lower rugosity (1.17)than both the NPAs and the habitat protection areas,suggesting that while MPAs enhance coral cover,their benefits for habitat structural complexity mayremain insignificant in the short term (six years). Inthe NTAs, the contribution of live corals to habitatcomplexity (28.3%) was lower than that of rubbles(34.4%). Moreover, slow-growing massive corals(e.g., Porites lutea), which usually have low rugosity,contributed a larger portion (up to 20%) to habitatcomplexity. In contrast, fast-growing, structuralcomplex arborescent corals (e.g., Acroporapruinosa)had a limited contribution (2.3%). Foliose corals,which dominated the coral community also havelower rugosity (1.2 ~ 1.3) compared to massive andarborescent corals, presumably due to phenotypicplasticity in response to specific environmental conditions.This study suggests that prioritizing coralspecies composition, especially corals with highrugosity, is important for effective reef frameworkreconstruction.