Caribbean reef corals have experienced unprecedented declines from climate change, anthropogenic stressors and infectious diseases in recent decades. Since 2014, a highly lethal, new disease, called stony coral tissue loss disease, has impacted many reef-coral species in Florida. During the summer of 2018, we noticed an anomalously high disease prevalence affecting different coral species in the northern portion of the Mexican Caribbean. We assessed the severity of this outbreak in 2018/2019 using the AGRRA coral protocol to survey 82 reef sites across the Mexican Caribbean. Then, using a subset of 14 sites, we detailed information from before the outbreak (2016/2017) to explore the consequences of the disease on the condition and composition of coral communities. Our findings show that the disease outbreak has already spread across the entire region by affecting similar species (with similar disease patterns) to those previously described for Florida. However, we observed a great variability in prevalence and tissue mortality that was not attributable to any geographical gradient. Using long-term data, we determined that there is no evidence of such high coral disease prevalence anywhere in the region before 2018, which suggests that the entire Mexican Caribbean was afflicted by the disease within a few months. The analysis of sites that contained pre-outbreak information showed that this event considerably increased coral mortality and severely changed the structure of coral communities in the region. Given the high prevalence and lethality of this disease, and the high number of susceptible species, we encourage reef researchers, managers and stakeholders across the Western Atlantic to accord it the highest priority for the near future.

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Diseases are major drivers of the deterioration of coral reefs and are linked to major declines in coral abundance, reef functionality, and reef-related ecosystems services. An outbreak of a new disease is currently rampaging through the populations of the remaining reef-building corals across the Caribbean region. The outbreak was first reported in Florida in 2014 and reached the northern Mesoamerican Reef by summer 2018, where it spread across the ~450-km reef system in only a few months. Rapid spread was generalized across all sites and mortality rates ranged from 94% to <10% among the 21 afflicted coral species. Most species of the family Meandrinadae (maze corals) and subfamily Faviinae (brain corals) sustained losses >50%. This single event further modified the coral communities across the region by increasing the relative dominance of weedy corals and reducing reef functionality, both in terms of functional diversity and calcium carbonate production. This emergent disease is likely to become the most lethal disturbance ever recorded in the Caribbean, and it will likely result in the onset of a new functional regime where key reef-building and complex branching acroporids, an apparently unaffected genus that underwent severe population declines decades ago and retained low population levels, will once again become conspicuous structural features in reef systems with yet even lower levels of physical functionality.

The ecology and structure of many tropical coral reefs have been markedly altered over the past few decades. Although long‐term recovery has been observed in terms of coral cover, it is not clear how novel species configurations shape reef functionality in impaired reefs. The identities and life‐history strategies of the corals species that recover are essential for understanding reef functional dynamics. We used a species identity approach to quantify the physical functionality outcomes over a 13 year period across 56 sites in the Mexican Caribbean. This region was affected by multiple stressors that converged and drastically damaged reefs in the early 2000s. Since then, the reefs have shown evidence of a modest recovery of coral cover. We used Bayesian linear models and annual rates of change to estimate temporal changes in physical functionality and coral cover. Moreover, a functional diversity framework was used to explore changes in coral composition and the traits of those assemblages. Between 2005 and 2018, physical functionality increased at a markedly lower rate compared to that of coral cover. The disparity between recovery rates depended on the identity of the species that increased (mainly non‐framework and foliose‐digitate corals). No changes in species dominance or functional trait composition were observed, whereas non‐framework building corals consistently dominated most reefs. Although the observed recovery of coral cover and functional potential may provide some ecological benefits, the long‐term effects on reef frameworks remain unclear, as changes in the cover of key reef‐building species were not observed. Our findings are likely to be representative of many reefs across the wider Caribbean basin, as declines in coral cover and rapid increases in the relative abundance of weedy corals have been reported regionally. A coral identity approach to assess species turnover is needed to understand and quantify changes in the functionality of coral reefs.

The ecology of coral reefs is rapidly shifting from historical baselines. One key-question is whether under these new, less favourable ecological conditions, coral reefs will be able to sustain key geo-ecological processes such as the capacity to accumulate carbonate structure. Here, we use data from 34 Caribbean reef sites to examine how the carbonate production, net erosion and net carbonate budgets, as well as the organisms underlying these processes, have changed over the past 15 years in the absence of further severe acute disturbances. We find that despite fundamental benthic ecological changes, these ecologically shifted coral assemblages have exhibited a modest but significant increase in their net carbonate budgets over the past 15 years. However, contrary to expectations this trend was driven by a decrease in erosion pressure, largely resulting from changes in the abundance and size-frequency distribution of parrotfishes, and not by an increase in rates of coral carbonate production. Although in the short term, the carbonate budgets seem to have benefitted marginally from reduced parrotfish erosion, the absence of these key substrate grazers, particularly of larger individuals, is unlikely to be conducive to reef recovery and will thus probably lock these reefs into low budget states.

Caribbean reef corals have experienced unprecedented declines from climate change, anthropogenic stressors and infectious diseases in recent decades. Since 2014 a highly lethal, new disease, called stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), has impacted many species in Florida. During the summer of 2018 we noticed an anomalously high disease prevalence affecting different coral species in the northern portion of the Mexican Caribbean. We assessed the severity of this outbreak in 2018/2019 using the AGRRA coral protocol to survey 82 reef sites across the Mexican Caribbean. Then, using a subset of 14 sites we detailed information from before the outbreak (2016/2017) to explore the consequences of the disease on the condition and composition of coral communities. Our findings show that the disease outbreak has already spread across the entire region, affecting similar species (with similar disease patterns) to those previously described for Florida. However, we observed a great variability in prevalence and tissue mortality that was not attributable to any geographical gradient. Using long-term data, we determined that there is no evidence of such high coral disease prevalence anywhere in the region before 2018, which suggests that the entire Mexican Caribbean (~450 km) was afflicted by the disease within a few months. The analysis of sites that contained pre-outbreak information showed that this event considerably increased coral mortality and severely changed the structure of coral communities in the region. Given the high prevalence and lethality of this disease, and the high number of susceptible species, we encourage reef researchers, managers and stakeholders across the Western Atlantic to accord it the highest priority for the near future.

Diseases are major drivers of the deterioration of coral reefs, linked to major declines in coral abundance, reef functionality, and reef-related ecosystems services1-3. An outbreak of a new disease is currently rampaging through the populations of the remaining reef-building corals across the Caribbean region. The outbreak was first reported in Florida in 2014 and reached the northern Mesoamerican reef by summer 2018, where it spread across the ~ 450-km reef system only in a few months4. Rapid infection was generalized across all sites and mortality rates ranged from 94% to < 10% among the 21 afflicted coral species. This single event further modified the coral communities across the region by increasing the relative dominance of weedy corals and reducing reef functionality, both in terms of functional diversity and calcium carbonate production. This emergent disease is likely to become the most lethal disturbance ever recorded in the Caribbean, and it will likely result in the onset of a new functional regime where key reef-building and complex branching acroporids (a genus apparently unaffected) will once again become conspicuous structural features in reef systems with yet even lower levels of physical functionality.