Apparent recruitment failure for the vast majority of coral species at Eilat, Red Sea

Guerrini, Gabriele; Yerushalmy, Maayan; Shefy, Dor; Shashar, Nadav; Rinkevich, Baruch

doi:10.1007/s00338-020-01998-4

Cited by 14 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 61 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The high rates of coral recruitment reported in this study are encouraging compared to many reefs where recruitment appears insufficient to replenish coral assemblages (Chui & Ang 2017, Guerrini et al 2020, particularly as recruitment declines and coral composition shifts were recorded following recurrent bleaching events even at the nearby GBR (Hughes et al 2019, Price et al 2019. The unique attributes of coral recruitment in New Caledonia, together with the high diversity and abundance of corals (Pichon 2007, Adjeroud et al 2019, bring hope for the resilience potential of this UNESCO World Heritage site, provided that no significant changes in the occurrences of large-scale disturbances or local stressors to the reefs occur in the future.…”

Section: Implications For Conservation Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 61%

“…The regulation of scleractinian coral populations, the major reef-building taxa and key components to the exceptional biodiversity of coral reef ecosystems, is largely deter-mined by early recruitment patterns and post-settlement events (Con nell et al 1997, Hughes et al with relative contributions that vary with species life strategies and reef environments (Doro poulos et al 2015, Edmunds 2018, Kayal et al 2018, Gouezo et al 2019. In fact, coral recruitment is a key indicator of reef community resilience capacities (McClanahan et al 2012, Adjeroud et al 2017, Hughes et al 2019, Guerrini et al 2020. Improving our knowledge of coral recruitment pro cesses has become critically important as large-scale perturbations and local stressors increasingly threaten the economic, cultural, social, and aesthet ical goods and services coral reefs provide to ~850 million people from more than 100 countries (Bellwood et al 2004, Hoegh-Guldberg & Bruno 2010, Kittinger et al 2012, Hughes et al 2017, Woodhead et al 2019.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Patterns of coral recruitment are, however, increasingly altered by global environmental changes, threatening the resilience capacities of coral reefs (Hughes et al 2019, Price et al 2019, Edmunds & Riegl 2020, Guerrini et al 2020. A recent synthesis has pointed out the global decline in coral recruitment since 1974, with decreasing rates in equatorial reefs but increasing densities at sub-tropical latitudes reflecting a poleward expansion in coral reef distribution (Price et al 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Extremely high but localized pulses of coral recruitment in the southwestern lagoon of New Caledonia and implications for conservation

Adjeroud

Peignon

Gauliard

et al. 2022

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recruitment processes largely drive spatial distributions, dynamics, and recovery potential of marine communities. Determining scales of variation in recruitment rates and composition can help in understanding population replenishment mechanisms, while identifying recruitment hotspots is crucial for improving conservation strategies, particularly for threatened marine ecosystems such as coral reefs. We examined the spatial and interannual variability (2012-2014) of coral recruitment at multiple scales within and among reef habitats (14 stations) in the southwestern lagoon of New Caledonia. Recruit assemblages were characterized by high recruitment rates compared to other regions (overall mean of 34.9 recruits per 11 × 11 × 1 cm settlement tile, corresponding to 1220.9 recruits m-2) and strong dominance of Acroporidae. We found a marked spatial heterogeneity among habitats but also exceptionally high interannual variation (100-fold), with extreme recruitment peaks (up to 13572.8 recruits m-2, with a maximum of 811 recruits on a single tile) recorded in 2014 at some fringing and mid-shelf reefs, the highest records ever reported to date. These encouraging results contrast with other reefs where recent declines in coral recruitment rates have been documented with major concerns for their resilience capacities. However, the marked spatio-temporal variability of coral recruitment complicates conservation strategies, as it makes it difficult to identify ‘recruitment hotspots’ as priority sites to protect for their potential capacity to boost the replenishment of local populations.

show abstract

Section: Implications For Conservation Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 61%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Extremely high but localized pulses of coral recruitment in the southwestern lagoon of New Caledonia and implications for conservation

Adjeroud

Peignon

Gauliard

et al. 2022

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…While the detection of settlement and recruitment hotspots in low coral-cover systems (another type of coral ‘oasis’ [ 13 ]) is not a panacea for conservation designed to enhance reef restoration [ 52 ], it does show for select taxa in a region largely dominated by brooding corals that low coral cover is not caused by recruitment failure per se (cf. [ 53 ]). The prominence of brooding corals in St. John is important to the interpretation of the present results, because these corals release well-developed larvae that inherit their algal symbionts from their mothers, and they are capable of settling almost immediately following release [ 44 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recruitment hotspots and bottlenecks mediate the distribution of corals on a Caribbean reef

Edmunds

2021

Biol. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recruitment hotspots are locations where organisms are added to populations at high rates. On tropical reefs where coral abundance has declined, recruitment hotspots are important because they have the potential to promote population recovery. Around St. John, US Virgin Islands, coral recruitment at five sites revealed a hotspot that has persistent for 14 years. Recruitment created a hotspot in density of juvenile corals that was 600 m southeast of the recruitment hotspot. Neither hotspot led to increased coral cover, thus revealing the stringency of the demographic bottleneck impeding progression of recruits to adult sizes and preventing population growth. Recruitment hotspots in low-density coral populations are valuable targets for conservation and sources of corals for restoration.

show abstract

“…In mesophotic reefs, in situ surveys of recruitment patterns have mostly been limited to the northern Red Sea and Western Australia, where artificial settlement tiles have been employed to count new coral recruits (Turner et al, 2018;Kramer et al, 2019;Shlesinger and Loya, 2021). Several studies have evaluated in situ coral recruitment patterns in the shallow reefs of Eilat and Bermuda through visual underwater identification of coral recruits on settlement tiles or on the natural substrate (Smith, 1992;Glassom et al, 2004;Abelson et al, 2005;Glassom and Chadwick, 2006;Martinez and Abelson, 2013;Shlesinger and Loya, 2016;Guerrini et al, 2020). Although being performed on the same site, these surveys revealed high variation in coral recruit numbers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In situ Estimation of Coral Recruitment Patterns From Shallow to Mesophotic Reefs Using an Optimized Fluorescence Imaging System

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Coral recruitment represents a key element for coral reef persistence and resilience in the face of environmental disturbances. Studying coral recruitment patterns is fundamental for assessing reef health and implementing appropriate management strategies in an era of climate change. The FluorIS system has been developed to acquire high resolution, wide field-of-view (FOV) in situ images of coral recruits fluorescence and has proven successful in shallow reef environments. However, up to now, its applicability to mesophotic coral ecosystems remains unknown due to the complexity of the system and the limited time available when working at mesophotic depth. In this study we optimized the FluorIS system by utilizing a single infrared-converted camera instead of the bulkier regular dual-camera system, substantially reducing the system complexity and significantly decreasing the acquisition time to an average of 10 s for a set of 3 images. Moreover, the speed-FluorIS system is much more economical, decreasing the cost of the full set-up by roughly 40% compared to the original dual-camera system. We tested the utility of the speed-FluorIS by surveying coral recruits across shallow and mesophotic reefs of the Red Sea (Gulf of Eilat) and Bermuda, two of the most northerly reefs in the world with markedly different substrate and topography, and demonstrate that the modified system enables fast imaging of fluorescence to study coral recruitment patterns over a broader range of depths and reef topographies than previous fluorescence methods. Our single-camera system represents a valuable, non-invasive and rapid underwater tool which will help standardize surveys and long-term monitoring of coral recruits, contributing to our understanding of these vital and delicate early life stages of corals.

show abstract

Apparent recruitment failure for the vast majority of coral species at Eilat, Red Sea

Cited by 14 publications

References 61 publications

Extremely high but localized pulses of coral recruitment in the southwestern lagoon of New Caledonia and implications for conservation

Extremely high but localized pulses of coral recruitment in the southwestern lagoon of New Caledonia and implications for conservation

Recruitment hotspots and bottlenecks mediate the distribution of corals on a Caribbean reef

In situ Estimation of Coral Recruitment Patterns From Shallow to Mesophotic Reefs Using an Optimized Fluorescence Imaging System

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About