Coral Reef Resilience through Biodiversity

Abstract

Irrefutable evidence of coral reef degradation worldwide and increasing pressure from rising seawater temperatures and ocean acidification associated with climate change have led to a focus on reef resilience and a call to “manage” coral reefs for resilience. Ideally, global action to reduce emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will be accompanied by local action. Effective management requires reduction of local stressors, identification of the characteristics of resilient reefs, and design of marine protected area networks that include potentially resilient reefs. Future research is needed on how stressors interact, on how climate change will affect corals, fish, and other reef organisms as well as overall biodiversity, and on basic ecological processes such as connectivity. Not all reef species and reefs will respond similarly to local and global stressors. Because reef-building corals and other organisms have some potential to adapt to environmental changes, coral reefs will likely persist in spite of the unprecedented combination of stressors currently affecting them. The biodiversity of coral reefs is the basis for their remarkable beauty and for the benefits they provide to society. The extraordinary complexity of these ecosystems makes it both more difficult to predict their future and more likely they will have a future.

Patrones a gran escala del reclutamiento de coral en Isla Mona, Puerto Rico: evidencia de una trayectoria transitoria de comunidad después del blanqueamiento y mortalidad coralino masivo

“…Mona's isolated reef systems have followed a transitional trajectory leading to a major phase shift favoring macroalgae and non-reef building, ephemeral coral taxa. Lack of coral reef recovery following major disturbances, including climate change, has been a concerning phenomenon across the Caribbean (McClanahan & Muthiga, 1998; Aronson et al., 2002;Gardner et al, 2003;Rogers, 2013), and might have significant long-term ecological and socio-economic consequences (Buddemeier et al, 2008;Paddack et al, 2009;Lane et al, 2013), including regionalscale declines in coral cover and reef complexity (Alvarez-Flip et al, 2011). We suggest that lack of net recovery in remote Mona Island's reefs could be the combined result of several mechanisms involving climate change-related post-bleaching mass coral mortality, chronic YBD disease outbreaks, rapid substrate dominance and out-competition of remnant corals by brown unpalatable macroalgae, declining herbivory due to long-term fishing impacts, lack of D. antillarum population recovery, altered microbial communities associated with crustose coralline algae (CCA) that may negatively affect coral larval settlement cues, and Mona Island's reefs limited connectivity to other reef systems which highly limits potential successful larval recruitment from other locations.…”

A Unique Coral Community in the Mangroves of Hurricane Hole, St. John, US Virgin Islands

“…The area offers outstanding possibilities for further research. The particular combination of biological and physical environmental factors and the high diversity of coral and other species may make this ecosystem more resistant and more resilient to future local, regional and global stressors [1,27]. …”

Mangrove habitats provide refuge from climate change for reef-building corals

“…Research is needed on how these factors interact and how they will affect the overall biodiversity, function, and transition of these ecosystems. The high diversity of coral reefs (among species and within species) and variable responses of organisms to climate change increase the likelihood that at least some reef species will be able to persist in locations with particular environmental conditions in the face of changing climate (Rogers, 2013 and diversity of corals in the mangrove habitats of St. John could be a recent phenomenon (within the past several decades). Evidence of shoreward migrations of coral in response to past changes in sea level rise is well documented in the geologic record (e.g.…”