Coral bleaching is a stress response of corals induced by a variety of factors, but these events have become more frequent and intense in response to recent climate-change-related temperature anomalies. We tested the hypothesis that coral reefs affected by bleaching events are currently heavily infested by boring sponges, which are playing a significant role in the destruction of their physical structure. Seventeen reefs that cover the entire distributional range of corals along the Mexican Pacific coast were studied between 2005/2006, and later between 2009/2010. Most of these coral reefs were previously impacted by bleaching events, which resulted in coral mortalities. Sponge abundance and species richness was used as an indicator of bioerosion, and coral cover was used to describe the present condition of coral reefs. Coral reefs are currently highly invaded (46% of the samples examined) by a very high diversity of boring sponges (20 species); being the coral reef framework the substrate most invaded (56%) followed by the rubbles (45%), and the living colonies (36%). The results also indicated that boring sponges are promoting the dislodgment of live colonies and large fragments from the framework. In summary, the eastern coral reefs affected by bleaching phenomena, mainly provoked by El Niño, present a high diversity and abundance of boring sponges, which are weakening the union of the colony with the reef framework and promoting their dislodgment. These phenomena will probably become even more intense and severe, as temperatures are projected to continue to rise under the scenarios for future climate change, which could place many eastern coral reefs beyond their survival threshold.

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The dispersion coefficient of a passive solute in a steady-state pure electro-osmotic flow (EOF) of a viscoelastic liquid, whose rheological behaviour follows the simplified Phan-Thien–Tanner (sPTT) model, along a parallel flat plate microchannel, is studied. The walls of the microchannel are assumed to have modulated and low $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}$ potentials, which vary slowly in the axial direction in a sinusoidal manner. The flow field required to obtain the dispersion coefficient was solved using the lubrication approximation theory (LAT). The solution of the electric potential is based on the Debye–Hückel approximation for a symmetric $(z:z)$ electrolyte. The viscoelasticity of the fluid is observed to notably amplify the axial distribution of the effective dispersion coefficients due to the variation in the $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}$ potentials of the walls. The problem was formulated for two cases: when the Debye layer thickness (EDL) was on the order of unity (thick EDL) and in the limit where the thickness of the EDL was very small compared with the height of the microchannel (thin EDL limit). Due to the coupling between the nonlinear governing equations and the sPTT fluid model, they were replaced by their approximate linearized forms and solved in the limit of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}\ll 1$ using the regular perturbation technique. Here $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}$ is the amplitude of the sinusoidal function of the $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}$ potentials. Additionally, the numerical solution of the simplified governing equations was also obtained for $\unicode[STIX]{x1D700}=O(1)$ and compared with the approximate solution, showing excellent agreement for $0\leqslant \unicode[STIX]{x1D700}\leqslant 0.3$. Note that the dispersion coefficient primarily depends on the Deborah number, on the ratio of the half-height of the microchannel to the Debye length, and on the assumed variation in the $\unicode[STIX]{x1D701}$ potentials of the walls.

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