Table 2. Modelling results for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) scenarios predicting total fish abundance (N_total) to the GBR and to Ningaloo Reef (NR).

Observed N: observed fish abundance; Top model: the best performing model/s ranked by the weight of the Akaike Information Criteria corrected for small sample sizes (wAICc); $R_m^{\mathbf{2}}$: marginal R²; $R_c^{\mathbf{2}}$: conditional R² with R²: variance explained; High effect: predictors with the highest effect size; Pred N: range of predicted fish abundance and the respective standard error (Pred se N); CVerror: cross-validation error and its percentage (CVerror(%)); Val_R²: results of the direct validation of the observed abundances versus the predicted values for the same locations and the respective p-value. All scenarios resulted in some wAICc support for the null model. Italics indicate non-significant correlations between the observed values at NR and transferred predictions from the GBR based on a p-value <0.05. A total of 133 sites were considered in the GBR.

Scenario	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
Observed N	59–2,127	108–2,826	54–1,413	110–654	55–827	17–472	29–2,945
Top models	7	7	7	7	7	7	7
	5			3	3	4	4
wAICc	0.342	0.803	0.805	0.493	0.488	0.362	0.355
	0.252			0.260	0.261	0.325	0.331
$R_m^{\mathbf{2}}$	17.3	19.0	18.9	21.5	21.3	21.0	21.2
	12.4			13.4	13.3	23.2	23.4
$R_c^{\mathbf{2}}$	99.0	99.4	98.8	99.3	98.7	98.7	99.4
	99.0			99.4	98.8	98.8	99.4
Highest effect	Depth/NO3	NO3/Si	NO3	NO3	NO3	Crbnt	Crbnt
			Si
Prediction to the GBR
Pred Nt	561–1,415	444–2,904	222–1,447	493–3,113	248–538	173–958	345–1,914
Pred se Nt	0.05–0.2	0.06–0.4	0.06–0.4	0.07–0.34	0.07–0.34	0.07–0.27	0.07–0.27
CVerror	100.4 ± 31.9	99.2 ± 28.7	53.1 ± 14.2	157.4 ± 55.1	80.6 ± 26.2	51.7 ± 11.8	119.5 ± 21.0
CVerror(%)	12.8 ± 3.4	13.0 ± 5.3	14.0 ± 6.0	15.8 ± 2.6	19.5 ± 4.2	16.1 ± 6.2	22.5 ± 8.9
Val_R2	13.0	9.0	9.0	13.6	13.6	18.5	18.6
p-value	<0.001	0.002	0.002	<0.001	<0.001	<0.001	<0.001
Transferred prediction to NR
Pred Nt	0–729	0–589	0–294	0–650	0–327	0–365	0–734
Pred se Nt	0–0.2	0–0.27	0–0.3	0–0.23	0–0.2	0–0.2	0–0.2
Val_R2	<0.1	0.2	0.2	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1	<0.1
p-value	0.937	0.799	0.796	0.892	0.894	0.586	0.578