Recruitment Failure, Life Histories, and Long-Term Decline of Caribbean Corals

Abstract

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Cold-water event of January 2010 results in catastrophic benthic mortality on patch reefs in the Florida Keys

“…However, it is also possible that M. annularis complex were better suited to endure previous cold-water disturbances. Recent declines have been reported for M. annularis complex throughout much of the Caribbean and have been linked to a suite of acute and chronic stressors (Hughes and Tanner 2000;Rogers and Miller 2006;Edmunds and Elahi 2007). It is plausible that the cumulative effect of multiple stressors documented in the Florida Keys (Lirman 2001;Patterson et al 2002;Lipp et al 2002;Lapointe et al 2004;Lirman and Fong 2007;Donahue et al 2008;Wagner et al 2010) has inhibited the ability of M. annularis complex to persist through major disturbances like the one described herein.…”

Modeling vertical coral connectivity and mesophotic refugia

“…Modeled estimates of vertical connectivity were highly sensitive to scenarios of depth-specific productivity, suggesting accuracy in estimation of habitat extent, adult density, and adult fecundity is essential to developing realistic models of dispersal (Hughes and Tanner 2000;Botsford et al 2009) and thus, the accurate prediction of MSS in the USVI.…”

Molecular characterization of symbiotic algae (Symbiodinium spp.) in soritid foraminifera (Sorites orbiculus) and a scleractinian coral (Orbicella annularis) from St John, US Virgin Islands

“…This coral grows slowly, is long-lived, and recruits sexually at low densities (Szmant 1991;Hughes and Tanner 2000), but its colonies undergo fission to produce multiple copies (i.e., ramets) of each host genotype (i.e., genets) (Alvarado-Chacon and Acosta 2009), which can form near mono-specific stands (Edmunds and Elahi 2007). O. annularis is one of the most extensively studied corals in the Caribbean and tropical west Atlantic (Budd and Pandolfi 2004;Fukami et al 2008;Levitan et al 2004) and was one of the first scleractinian hosts in which Symbiodinium diversity and ecology was examined (Rowan and Powers 1991;Rowan and Knowlton 1995).…”