Fig. 4

Corallivores on a South Pacific reef disperse millions of live Symbiodiniaceae cells per 100 m² per day. We estimated the number of live Symbiodiniaceae cells dispersed by the obligate corallivores Chaetodon ornatissimus (CHOR) and Chaetodon reticulatus (CHRE) and the facultative corallivore Chaetodon citrinellus (CHCI) per 100 m² per day by applying a bootstrap approach (1000 iterations) to the equation T = gSWCF. The estimated number of dispersed Symbiodiniaceae cells (T) is the product of five variables: A fish species-specific constant representing the estimated number of egestions in an eight-hour day (g); observed fecal pellet sizes in cm (S); measured densities of fecal samples in g cm^− 1 (W); measured densities of Symbiodiniaceae cells g^− 1 feces (C); and observed fish densities per 100 m² (F). Due to variation in fish species distributions, most data for CHOR and CHRE were collected on the fore reef, whereas data for CHCI were collected on the back reef. See Table S5 for replication. For data used see Additional file 2