Small-Scale Variability Dominates Benthic Coverage and Diversity Across the Jardines de La Reina, Cuba Coral Reef System

Abstract

Coral reefs are complex and biodiverse ecosystems that are undergoing significant change. Understanding reef composition and biodiversity at multiple spatial scales is necessary to track both large-scale and more subtle ecosystem changes. The Jardines de la Reina (JR) archipelago, located offshore of the island of Cuba, contains the largest marine protected area (MPA) in the Caribbean Sea but lacks multi-scale studies. In this contribution, we documented the diversity of scleractinian corals, octocorals, algae, and sponges across nested spatial scales spanning four orders of magnitude (10 1-10 5 m). In addition, we tested the hypothesis that species diversity followed a gradient along the ca. 200 km of reef tract. Across the archipelago, we examined benthic cover and species diversity within 255 photo-quadrats (25 × 25 cm) at 13 fore reef sites (two sampling locations per site, and 10 photo-quadrats per location). Small-scale (10 1 m) variability between photo-quadrats characterized the coral reef community structure in JR compared with local-(10 2 m) and mesoscale (10 4-10 5 m) variability. This finding suggests that biological processes (e.g., recruitment, competition) had primacy over hydrodynamics for driving the differences in reef community composition. However, the dominance of algae and low cover and diversity of scleractinian corals suggests the pervasive effects of global change on coral communities despite potential benefits provided by the MPA (e.g., oligotrophy and abundance of herbivores). There was no gradient of benthic community structure along the fore reef tract of JR; instead, a patchy distribution occurred in response to more subtle drivers acting at local scales. Overall, our multi-scale comparison was useful for differentiating the impacts of processes potentially impacting the JR reefs, thus providing important information to understand how reef communities are impacted by different environmental and anthropogenic stressors, and the potential benefits of MPAs.

Temporal behavior of air and sea surface temperature in a marine protected area of Cuba

“…Mean SST values measured at reef sites of the JRPN in 2000 and 2016 were in the ranges reported by previous studies at Jardines de la Reina Archipelago (EMILSSON;TÁPANES 1971;LLUIS-RIERA, 1977;GONZÁLEZ-DE ZAYAS et al, 2006;BUSTAMANTE LÓPEZ et al, 2018;HERNÁNDEZ-FERNÁNDEZ et al, 2019a). Mitrani-Arenal and Díaz-Rodríguez ( 2004) found around Cuban oceanic waters mean SST of 28.0 °C or greater than this value from May to November (between 1966 and 1993) that are similar to the measured SST values of this research.…”

Ancillary data from animal-borne cameras as an ecological survey tool for marine communities

“…2). However, we would not expect complete agreement across all surveys; the surveys were not conducted in the exact same locations or times and reefs can be highly variable over short spatial and temporal scales (for example Hernández-Fernández et al 2019). Though this would be problematic for survey assessment frameworks which are dependent on repeated surveys of the same areas, many frameworks utilize haphazard or random sampling (Lewis 2004;Smith et al 2017), which would be more appropriate for these data.…”

Variación temporal de especies de corales pétreos dominantes en arrecifes del Parque Nacional Jardines de la Reina, Cuba

“…A pesar de la degradación de Orbicella spp., ante los indicadores Más recientemente, en una investigación realizada en el PNJR sobre la variabilidad a pequeña escala de la cobertura y diversidad de las especies bentónicas dominantes (Hernández-Fernández et al 2019b), no se observó la presencia de enfermedades. Las variaciones en los arrecifes, cuando no pueden ser explicadas por variables ambientales, tal vez tengan respuestas en disturbios antrópicos que inciden a nivel local (Ferrigno et al 2016).…”

“…En el Parque Nacional Jardines de la Reina (PNJR) se han registrado como especies dominantes, para los escarpes pocos profundos, S. siderea, A. agaricites y P. astreoides (Hernández-Fernández et al 2011;Ferrer-Rodríguez et al 2016;Hernández-Fernández et al 2019a;Hernández-Fernández et al 2019b) y, como moderadamente común, Orbicella spp. (González-Díaz et al 2018;Hernández-Fernández et al 2019b), hábitat que se caracteriza por presentar una estructura en la comunidad coralina, con alta variabilidad a pequeña escala-10 1 m- (Hernández-Fernández et al 2019b) (Jackson et al 2014;De Bakker et al 2016), igualmente se espera que sucedan en el Parque Nacional Jardines de la Reina (PNJR), donde ello no se ha constatado con anterioridad, así que este trabajo se propuso analizar la variación temporal de ese grupo de especies dominantes, desde el 2001 hasta el 2017. Esta información sería de gran utilidad para los tomadores de decisiones del parque, pues les permitiría tomar las medidas pertinentes ante un posible deterioro del arrecife.…”