Figure 4. Interactions among bleaching, disease and fragmentation.

Mean bleaching extent (% of colony affected) for categories of colonies surveyed including: 1) Diseased and structurally intact where no breakage was noted (“attached”), 2) unaffected by disease and attached, 3) diseased and no longer attached to the substrate with evidence of fresh breakage (“fragment”), and 4) unaffected by disease and fragment. Data were combined from the first three sampling periods during the peak of bleaching. Letters indicate significance (p < 0.05) as determined by a two-way ANCOVA for the effect of fragmentation (capital letters) and disease status (lowercase letters). Numbers at base of bars indicate the sample size (# of colonies).