The persistent exposure of coral communities to more variable abiotic regimes is assumed to augment their resilience to future climatic variability. Yet, while the determinants of coral population resilience across species remain unknown, we are unable to predict the winners and losers across reef ecosystems exposed to increasingly variable conditions. Using annual surveys of 3171 coral individuals across Australia and Japan (2016-2019), we explored spatial variation across the short- and long-term dynamics of competitive, stress-tolerant, and weedy assemblages to evaluate how thermal variability mediates the structural composition of coral communities. Here this dataset contains the raw colony-level data collected during these annual surveys, detailing the size, survival, and recruitment of coral colonies within a series of permenant plots arranged throughout the reef communities of Okinawa, Kochi (both Japan), the Solitary Islands Marine Park, and Heron Island (both Australia). This data set facilitates the comparison of coral population dynamics between tropical and subtropical ecoregions and between different taxonomic and morpho-functional groups.

For methodological details please see Cant et al. (2023) Coral assemblages at higher latitudes favour short-term potential over long-term performance. Ecology.

The raw data is provided as a csv file arranged in a stacked format with each row detailing the demographic transitions recorded for an individual colony across a single annual interval (i.e., 2016 to 2017). The first 11 columns of the dataset outline each colonies associated metadata such as location (Country, ecoregion etc.), colony identity (e.g. Plot number), taxonomy (to species level where possible), and life history classification (LHS). The remaining columns then describe each colonies recorded demographic transitions as follows:

time.t = 'Starting year of corresponding annual interval'

Fragment.t = 'was the colony a product of fragmentation during the previous year' (Yes/No/NA)

Bleaching.t = 'Bleaching state at time t' (None/Slight/Moderate/Severe/NA)

Size.t = 'Colony size recorded at time t' (is NA if colony recruited between time t and t+1)

time.t1 = 'Ending year of corresponding annual interval'

No.frag.t1 = 'Number of fragments produced by colony between time t and time t+1'

Bleaching.t1 = 'Bleaching state at time t+1' (None/Slight/Moderate/Severe/NA)

Size.t1 = Colony size recorded at time t+1' (is NA if colony died between time t and t+1)

Fragment .t1 = 'was the colony a product of fragmentation between time t and time t+1'  (Yes/No/NA)

Recruit.t1 = 'was the colony a product of fragmentation between time t and time t+1' (Yes/No/NA)