This work was made possible thanks to the Pine Cay Homeowners Association and the US National Science Foundation. All procedures were approved by the Turks and Caicos DECR (Initial Permit: 17-08-02-14; Revisit Permit: 17-10-01-15) and Harvard University IACUC (26-11). We thank C. Santoro for help in the field and with the manuscript, and members of the Losos laboratory for valuable feedback. A.H. thanks the Caribaea Initiative for promoting science in the Caribbean and facilitating the networking that made the initial Turks and Caicos study possible.

Reviewer information

Nature thanks E. Palkovacs and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.