Table 1.

Measurements of host, pathogen and environmental factors. Pathogen factors were measured 4 days prior to (initial) and 1 to 3 days after (final) the monitoring period (equations in electronic supplementary material). For lesion severity, low, moderate and high correspond to less than 25%, 25–75% and greater than 75% of the colony affected by disease, respectively.

factor	metric description	range
host	host size (maximum diameter)	12–135 cm
host	sediment cover	0–33% of tissue covered
host	host cover	4–67% cover of M. capitata colonies in 2 m2
environment	benthic cover (coral, sponge, and algae)	12–100% cover in 2 m2
environment	diversity: species richness	2–7
environment	diversity: Simpson's diversity index	0.12–0.72
environment	depth	0.5–7 m
environment	reef position	flat, crest, slope
pathogen	distance to diseased neighbours	initial: 0.00–8.23 m
		final: 0.16–7.90 m
pathogen	lesion severity	initial: low–high
		final: moderate–high
pathogen	size-weighted lesion severity	initial: 4–90 cm2
		final: 9–150 cm2
pathogen	distance- and size-weighted lesion severity	initial: 0.05–2643
		final: 0.21–256