Discussion
Our findings show a clear disparity in the response of benthic
configurations under global warming between the Honduras and Indonesia
coral reef sites. The drastic responses at the Honduras sites of
individual taxa suggests more disturbance was perpetuated through the
extremely high thermal anomaly years of 2016-2017 (Fig 2), whereas the
Indonesia sites were relatively sheltered from ocean warming with
evidence of lower SSTAs clear for every survey year, and less drastic
changes in composition. Furthermore, the clear response of compositional
shifts of coral reefs in Honduras under elevated ocean temperatures
highlights the disparate effect of global warming for driving the shifts
of coral reef benthic configuration at the Honduras site compared to the
Indonesia site (Fig 5).