Ecological memory modifies the cumulative impact of recurrent climate extremes

Hughes, Terry P.; Kerry, James T.; Connolly, Sean R.; Baird, Andrew H.; Eakin, C. Mark; Heron, Scott F.; Hoey, Andrew S.; Hoogenboom, Mia O.; Jacobson, Mizue; Liu, Gang; Pratchett, Morgan S.; Skirving, William; Torda, Gergely

doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0351-2

Cited by 279 publications

(303 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…The decline of coral cover was greater following the initial 2015 event, but thermal stress was more intense in 2016 (Head et al, ). This general interannual pattern also occurred on the northern GBR but was spread across 2016 and 2017 (Hughes, Kerry, et al, ; Hughes et al, ). Hence, we expected disturbance‐related benefits to parrotfish growth to appear in 2015 for the CA and 2016 for the GBR.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Synchronous biological feedbacks in parrotfishes associated with pantropical coral bleaching

Taylor

Benkwitt

Choat

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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Biological feedbacks generated through patterns of disturbance are vital for sustaining ecosystem states. Recent ocean warming and thermal anomalies have caused pantropical episodes of coral bleaching, which has led to widespread coral mortality and a range of subsequent effects on coral reef communities. Although the response of many reef‐associated fishes to major disturbance events on coral reefs is negative (e.g., reduced abundance and condition), parrotfishes show strong feedbacks after disturbance to living reef structure manifesting as increases in abundance. However, the mechanisms underlying this response are poorly understood. Using biochronological reconstructions of annual otolith (ear stone) growth from two ocean basins, we tested whether parrotfish growth was enhanced following bleaching‐related coral mortality, thus providing an organismal mechanism for demographic changes in populations. Both major feeding guilds of parrotfishes (scrapers and excavators) exhibited enhanced growth of individuals after bleaching that was decoupled from expected thermal performance, a pattern that was not evident in other reef fish taxa from the same environment. These results provide evidence for a more nuanced ecological feedback system—one where disturbance plays a key role in mediating parrotfish–benthos interactions. By influencing the biology of assemblages, disturbance can thereby stimulate change in parrotfish grazing intensity and ultimately reef geomorphology over time. This feedback cycle operated historically at within‐reef scales; however, our results demonstrate that the scale, magnitude, and severity of recent thermal events are entraining the biological responses of disparate communities to respond in synchrony. This may fundamentally alter feedbacks in the relationships between parrotfishes and reef systems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Synchronous biological feedbacks in parrotfishes associated with pantropical coral bleaching

Taylor

Benkwitt

Choat

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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“…Recent data from the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) following repeated bleaching events show that corals on the Northern GBR bleached less severely in 2017 than in 2016 (Hughes, Anderson, et al, ; Hughes, Kerry, et al, ). These patterns have been taken to indicate the differential survival of more heat tolerant corals in the Northern GBR in 2016, leaving a more tolerant population in 2017 (Hughes, Anderson, et al, ; Hughes, Kerry, et al, ). In contrast, our study tracked the same individual colonies in the 2015 and 2017 bleaching events, so there was no chance for differential selection in our system, and the effects we saw were due to different susceptibilities of the same individuals to serial events.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There have been three major global bleaching events since the records began in the 1980s (Hughes et al, ). The most recent and severe occurred during the strong El Niño years of 2015–2017, and was estimated to impact more than a third of the world s coral reefs (Hughes, Anderson, et al, ; Hughes, Kerry, et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transcriptomic resilience, symbiont shuffling, and vulnerability to recurrent bleaching in reef‐building corals

et al. 2019

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As climate change progresses and extreme temperature events increase in frequency, rates of disturbance may soon outpace the capacity of certain species of reef‐building coral to recover from bleaching. This may lead to dramatic shifts in community composition and ecosystem function. Understanding variation in rates of bleaching recovery among species and how that translates to resilience to recurrent bleaching is fundamental to predicting the impacts of increasing disturbances on coral reefs globally. We tracked the response of two heat sensitive species in the genus Acropora to repeated bleaching events during the austral summers of 2015 and 2017. Despite a similar bleaching response, the species Acropora gemmifera recovered faster based on transcriptome‐wide gene expression patterns and had a more dynamic algal symbiont community than Acropora hyacinthus growing on the same reef. Moreover, A. gemmifera had higher survival to repeated heat extremes, with six‐fold lower mortality than A. hyacinthus. These patterns suggest that speed of recovery from a first round of bleaching, based on multiple mechanisms, contributes strongly to sensitivity to a second round of bleaching. Furthermore, our data uncovered intragenus variation in a group of corals thought generally to be heat‐sensitive and therefore paint a more nuanced view of the future health of coral reef ecosystems against a backdrop of increasing thermal disturbances.

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“…The recent 2015–2017 global bleaching event (Hughes, Anderson, et al, ) has provided additional context for the response of corals at the ecosystem scale. Hughes et al () showed that bleaching in the second event was less severe than the preceding year despite higher degree heating weeks at most sites. The authors also demonstrated that accounting for the temperature during the first bleaching event enabled a substantially more accurate prediction of bleaching response during the second event, suggesting that history of recurrent events is an important component.…”

Section: Ecological Signatures Of Acclimatization In Coralsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The authors also demonstrated that accounting for the temperature during the first bleaching event enabled a substantially more accurate prediction of bleaching response during the second event, suggesting that history of recurrent events is an important component. This difference could be due to acclimatization, but the authors could not rule out symbiont shuffling or differential mortality leading to a higher proportion of resilient corals in the second event (Hughes et al, ). Studies that follow individual corals can conclusively rule out differential mortality, such as (Fisch, Drury, Towle, Winter, & Miller, ), who documented a substantial minority of surveyed colonies which experienced less severe visual bleaching in recurrent bleaching events that could be attributed to acclimatization (but see Thomas, López, Morikawa, & Palumbi, ).…”

Section: Ecological Signatures Of Acclimatization In Coralsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resilience in reef‐building corals: The ecological and evolutionary importance of the host response to thermal stress

Drury

2020

Molecular Ecology

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Coral reefs are under extreme threat due to a number of stressors, but temperature increases due to changing climate are the most severe. Rising ocean temperatures coupled with local extremes lead to extensive bleaching, where the coral‐algal symbiosis breaks down and corals may die, compromising the structure and function of reefs. Although the symbiotic nature of the coral colony has historically been a focus of research on coral resilience, the host itself is a foundational component in the response to thermal stress. Fixed effects in the coral host set trait baselines through evolutionary processes, acting on many loci of small effect to create mosaics of thermal tolerance across latitudes and individual coral reefs. These genomic differences can be strongly heritable, producing wide variation among clones of different genotypes or families of a specific larval cross. Phenotypic plasticity is overlaid on these baselines and a growing body of knowledge demonstrates the potential for acclimatization of reef‐building corals through a variety of mechanisms that promote resilience and stress tolerance. The long‐term persistence of coral reefs will require many of these mechanisms to adjust to warmer temperatures within a generation, bridging the gap to reproductive events that allow recombination of standing diversity and adaptive change. Business‐as‐usual climate scenarios will probably lead to the loss of some coral populations or species in the future, so the interaction between intragenerational effects and evolutionary pressure is critical for the survival of reefs.

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Ecological memory modifies the cumulative impact of recurrent climate extremes

Cited by 279 publications

References 25 publications

Synchronous biological feedbacks in parrotfishes associated with pantropical coral bleaching

Synchronous biological feedbacks in parrotfishes associated with pantropical coral bleaching

Transcriptomic resilience, symbiont shuffling, and vulnerability to recurrent bleaching in reef‐building corals

Resilience in reef‐building corals: The ecological and evolutionary importance of the host response to thermal stress

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