Observations of the thermal environment on Red Sea platform reefs: a heat budget analysis

Niche acclimatization in Red Sea corals is dependent on flexibility of host-symbiont association

“…In the central Red Sea, water temperatures undergo large variation and regularly exceed 32°C in the summer (Davis et al 2011), but little is known about how corals acclimatize to the differences in prevailing environmental conditions. In this study, we assessed whether compensation mechanisms differ between coral species harboring a specific Symbiodinium type and corals that are known to associate with a variable Symbiodinium community to further understand the interaction between host-Symbiodinium specificity and acclimatization potential of the coral holobiont.…”

Assessing the drivers of spatial variation in thermal forcing across a nearshore reef system and implications for coral bleaching

“…A number of studies have shown, however, that the in situ temperatures of nearshore waters at the local or reef scale (, 1 km) can deviate significantly from the temperature of offshore waters (Leichter et al 2006;Castillo and Lima 2010;Pineda et al 2013). Furthermore, spatial variations in water temperature and bleaching intensity within nearshore reef systems can occur over tens to hundreds of meters (Davis et al 2011;van Woesik et al 2012;Pineda et al 2013). Such small-scale variations in temperature and thermal stress could thus pose a challenge for predicting the bleaching or reduced growth of corals based solely on offshore sea surface temperatures (SST; McClanahan et al 2007;Maynard et al 2008;Weeks et al 2008).…”

“…How much water temperatures change for a given level of heat exchange, however, further depends on the strength and pattern of reef circulation (Nadaoka et al 2001;McCabe et al 2010;Davis et al 2011). Earlier studies have examined the combined role of atmospheric forcing and circulation on changes in water temperature over the scale of hundreds of meters in smaller reef systems (McCabe et al 2010;Davis et al 2011); however, there are many larger reef systems that span several kilometers and contain waters whose age ranges from several hours to several days (Jouon et al 2006;Zhang et al 2012). The complex dependency of reef circulation and water residence time on offshore wave conditions, tides, and overall reef geomorphology would suggest that spatial variations in temperature within many of these larger reef systems can be resolved only with the aid of a three-dimensional hydrodynamic model (André-fouët et al 2006;Zhang et al 2013).…”

Evaluation and Recommendations for Improving the Accuracy of an Inexpensive Water Temperature Logger

“…Consequently, Temp Pros have been widely used to characterize the temporal and spatial structure of ocean, lake, and stream water temperatures (e.g., Blicher et al 2010;Davis et al 2011;Huang et al 2011;Lentz et al 2008;Oda and Kanda 2009;Oliver and Palumbi 2011;Ruiz-Ochoa et al 2012;Shcherbina and Gawarkiewicz 2008;Troy et al 2012; and many others).…”

“…However, comparisons of water temperature measurements from Temp Pros with more accurate temperature measurements during several ocean deployments suggested the Temp Pro accuracy could be substantially improved by removing a bias. This observation motivated a more thorough evaluation of the accuracy of the Temp Pro water temperature measurements using both a calibration bath facility at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and in situ comparisons to more accurate Sea-Bird Electronics MicroCAT temperature measurements during ocean deployments over the continental shelves south of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts (Lentz et al 2008), and the Red Sea near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (Davis et al 2011). …”