Reefs of Florida and the Dry Tortugas: Miami to Key West, Florida July 2–7, 1989

Shinn, Eugene A.; Lidz, Barbara H.; Halley, Robert B.; Hudson, J. Harold; Kindinger, Jack L.

doi:10.1029/ft176

Cited by 14 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Their result of abundant Acropora spp. (including the presence of A. palmata) in the modern patch reef death assemblage should therefore not be surprising as Gilmore and Hall (1976) indicated populations of A. cervicornis on patch reefs of the upper Keys, while Shinn et al (1989) noted that several large patch reefs contained significant populations of A. palmata on their seaward sides before their demise of the past two decades. If the death assemblages of modern patch reefs of Florida are the appropriate analogues for the fossil record, as postulated by Greenstein and Pandolfi (1997;see also Greenstein and Curran 1997), what happened to all the Acropora in the Key Largo Limestone?…”

Section: The Pleistocene Reef Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These exposed sections are equivalent to the Q5 unit of Perkins (1977). The reefs were formed during the last major interglacial high sea-level stand (MIS 5e) and are equivalent to and transitional with the oolitic facies of the Miami Limestone (Coniglio and Harrison 1983;Kindinger 1986;Evans 1987;Shinn et al 1989). Age determinations for this unit give an estimate of between 120 and 135 ka (Broecker and Thurber 1964;Osmund, Carpenter, and Windom 1964;Muhs et al 1992;Fruijtier, Elliott, and Schlager 2000).…”

Section: The Pleistocene Reef Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In retrospect, this was not surprising, as coral translocation experiments moving A. cervicornis to inshore positions showed that the coral was killed outright when the water temperature fell to 13.3°C (Shinn 1966(Shinn , 1989. It has also been shown that A. palmata is equally sensitive to cold temperatures (Antonius 1977;Macintyre 1988;Shinn et al 1989;Jaap and Sargent 1994).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their mortality, however, was caused by factors different from those for the Acropora species (see Aronson and Precht 2001b). In Florida, it is well documented that Acropora-dominated communities are dynamic at the scale of individual reefs and they have been extremely volatile over the past century (Mayer 1902;Shinn 1976;Enos 1977;Davis 1982;Shinn et al 1989;Jaap and Sargent 1994;Jaap 1998). At the scale of the entire reef tract, deteriorating conditions throughout the late Holocene led to contraction of acroporid reefs and the reef system as a whole.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Holocene architecture of reefs in the Florida Keys, however, is comprised primarily acroporids (Shinn 1963(Shinn , 1980(Shinn , 1984(Shinn , 1988(Shinn , 1989Kissling 1977a;Lighty 1977;Shinn et al 1981Shinn et al , 1989Macintyre 1988;Lidz et al 1997a;Precht et al 2000). We contend that this temporal difference provides an important clue to understanding the present community configuration along the Florida reef tract.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ecological Shifts along the Florida Reef Tract: The Past as a Key to the Future

Precht

Miller

Geological Approaches to Coral Reef Ecology

122

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Section: The Pleistocene Reef Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Pleistocene Reef Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Ecological Shifts along the Florida Reef Tract: The Past as a Key to the Future

Precht

Miller

Geological Approaches to Coral Reef Ecology

122

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The unprecedented loss of Florida's reef‐building corals and the emergence of a novel coral‐reef assemblage

Toth

Stathakopoulos

Kuffner

et al. 2019

Ecology

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Over the last half century, climate change, coral disease, and other anthropogenic disturbances have restructured coral‐reef ecosystems on a global scale. The disproportionate loss of once‐dominant, reef‐building taxa has facilitated relative increases in the abundance of “weedy” or stress‐tolerant coral species. Although the recent transformation of coral‐reef assemblages is unprecedented on ecological timescales, determining whether modern coral reefs have truly reached a novel ecosystem state requires evaluating the dynamics of reef composition over much longer periods of time. Here, we provide a geologic perspective on the shifting composition of Florida's reefs by reconstructing the millennial‐scale spatial and temporal variability in reef assemblages using 59 Holocene reef cores collected throughout the Florida Keys Reef Tract (FKRT). We then compare the relative abundances of reef‐building species in the Holocene reef framework to data from contemporary reef surveys to determine how much Florida's modern reef assemblages have diverged from long‐term baselines. We show that the composition of Florida's reefs was, until recently, remarkably stable over the last 8000 yr. The same corals that have dominated shallow‐water reefs throughout the western Atlantic for hundreds of thousands of years, Acropora palmata, Orbicella spp., and other massive coral taxa, accounted for nearly 90% of Florida's Holocene reef framework. In contrast, the species that now have the highest relative abundances on the FKRT, primarily Porites astreoides and Siderastrea siderea, were rare in the reef framework, suggesting that recent shifts in species assemblages are unprecedented over millennial timescales. Although it may not be possible to return coral reefs to pre‐Anthropocene states, our results suggest that coral‐reef management focused on the conservation and restoration of the reef‐building species of the past, will optimize efforts to preserve coral reefs, and the valuable ecosystem services they provide into the future.

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