Spatial patchiness in change, recruitment, and recovery on coral reefs at Lizard Island following consecutive bleaching events

Tebbett, Sterling B.; Morais, Juliano; Bellwood, David R.

doi:10.1016/j.marenvres.2021.105537

Cited by 20 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 96 publications

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“…Model assumptions were validated with residual plots. All analyses were conducted in R (R Team, 2020) with the lmer function from the "lme4" package (Bates, Mächler, et al, 2015). The predicted categorical estimates and confidence intervals of the models were calculated using the ggpredict function from the "ggeffects" package in R (Lüdecke, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, these acclimatization processes may vary among reef zones (Tebbett et al, 2022) and there is growing uncertainty regarding whether corals will resist or acclimatize to the impacts of thermal stress given a lengthening of warm periods and a shortening of the intervals between them (Li & Donner, 2022). Moreover, reefs that experience more infrequent bleaching events are more susceptible to coral loss .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Legacy effects of anthropogenic disturbances modulate dynamics in the world's coral reefs

González‐Barrios

Estrada‐Saldívar

Pérez‐Cervantes

et al. 2023

Global Change Biology

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Coral reefs are the most biodiverse marine ecosystems in the world and provide key services that support human well-being such as protecting coasts, providing habitats for commercially important species, and producing sediments (Moberg & Folke, 1999). The benefits of these services are intimately linked to the capacity of scleractinian corals to accumulate calcium carbonate and create complex threedimensional structures (Woodhead et al., 2019). However, coral reefs currently exist in environments dominated by human activities, which has affected natural disturbance regimes. The influence of anthropogenic activities on these regimes has created compound

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legacy effects of anthropogenic disturbances modulate dynamics in the world's coral reefs

González‐Barrios

Estrada‐Saldívar

Pérez‐Cervantes

et al. 2023

Global Change Biology

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“…For example, shifts in gene expression enable corals to acclimate to thermal stress (22,32). Such acclimatization processes can be anticipated at community scales and may vary among reef zones (33) or even regions such as the reefs of the eastern tropical Paci c, which have shown to be highly resilient after encountering acute thermal stress (34). Moreover, some studies have found that reefs that experience more infrequent bleaching events are more susceptible to coral loss than reefs that experience more frequent disturbances (23,35).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenic disturbances and ecological memory modulate dynamics in the world’s coral reefs

González‐Barrios

Estrada‐Saldívar

Pérez‐Cervantes

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Rapidly changing conditions alter disturbance patterns, highlighting the need to better understand how the transition from pulse disturbances to more persistent stress will impact ecosystem dynamics. We conducted a global analysis of the impacts of eleven acute disturbances on reef integrity using the rate of change of coral cover as a measure of damage. Then, we evaluated how the magnitude of the damage due to thermal stress, cyclones, and diseases varied among tropical Atlantic and Indo-Pacific reefs and whether the cumulative impact of thermal stress and cyclones was able to modulate the responses of reefs to future events. We found that reef damage largely depends on the condition of a reef before a disturbance, disturbance intensity, and biogeographic region, regardless of the type of disturbance. Changes in coral cover after bleaching events were largely influenced by the cumulative stress of past disturbances and did not depend on disturbance intensity or initial coral cover, which suggests that an ecological memory is present within coral communities. In contrast, the effect of cyclones (and likely other physical impacts) was primarily modulated by the initial reef condition and did not appear to be influenced by previous impacts. Our findings also underscore that coral reefs can recover if stressful conditions decrease, yet the lack of action to reduce anthropogenic impacts and greenhouse gas emissions continues to trigger reef degradation. We uphold that evidence-based strategies can guide managers to make better decisions to prepare for future disturbances.

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“…This motivates the development of spatially-explicit frameworks that can better accommodate the fine spatial scale variability of community assemblages, recovery rates and susceptibility to a disturbance and provide management-ready products to inform effective decision-making. Spatial patterns of coral reef recovery are driven by many variables acting at different spatial scales, including aspects of recent and past disturbance(s) (Connell et al, 1997;Graham et al, 2011;Ortiz et al, 2018;, community structure and demographic processes (Gilmour et al, 2013;Adjeroud et al, 2017;Kayal et al, 2018;Holbrook et al, 2018;Darling et al, 2019), and the environmental climatology of the habitats (Connell et al, 1997;Gouezo et al, 2019;Castro-Sanguino et al, 2021;Tebbett et al, 2022). Combined, this knowl-edge enables more accurate prediction of recovery dynamics of different populations and communities within a reef.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, these spatial patterns are typically estimated at discrete hierarchical spatial scales, including sites, reefs, habitats and regions to accommodate a high variability of recovery patterns within a reef (Hughes et al, 2012;Tebbett et al, 2022). The systematic lack of studies accounting for fine-scale variability highlights the need to explore the influence of space in the estimations of coral reef recovery patterns to support model-based decision-support that better aligns with management goals (Zurell et al, 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fine-scale interplay between decline and growth determines the spatial recovery of coral communities within a reef

Vercelloni¹,

Roelfsema²,

Kovács³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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As coral reefs endure increasing levels of disturbance, understanding patterns of recovery following disturbance(s) is paramount to assessing the sustainability of these ecosystems. Given the slow dynamics of coral reefs and the increasing frequency of environmental pressures, management strategies focus on understanding recovery patterns to drive efforts and actively promote the recovery of key coral populations. However, the fine spatial scale heterogeneity of coral dynamics challenges our capacity to understand recovery patterns at large spatial scales and guide effective management actions. In this study, we developed a spatio-temporal statistical model to estimate the long-term trajectories of branching, plate and massive corals at fine-spatial scales and predict their recovery patterns at unobserved locations within a reef. We parameterized the model using repeated and georeferenced observations from 783 locations during 16 years at Heron Reef (Great Barrier Reef, Australia). We then developed indicators of recovery that capture the interplay between coral growth and relative decline from disturbance(s) across time, space and growth morphology. Our results reveal that successful recoveries, expressed in terms of probability, are associated with minimum growth rate thresholds of 4.3\% and 6.4\% (absolute growth, y-2) for branching and plate corals in reef locations that were impacted by disturbance(s) at medium-high levels and historically abundant. As a product of the data revolution, predictive maps from statistical models support the development of new indicators that can support the identification of areas of concern to prioritise management intervention. They should be used into larger spatially explicit modelling framework for decision-making in reef conservation and restoration.

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Spatial patchiness in change, recruitment, and recovery on coral reefs at Lizard Island following consecutive bleaching events

Cited by 20 publications

References 96 publications

Legacy effects of anthropogenic disturbances modulate dynamics in the world's coral reefs

Legacy effects of anthropogenic disturbances modulate dynamics in the world's coral reefs

Anthropogenic disturbances and ecological memory modulate dynamics in the world’s coral reefs

Fine-scale interplay between decline and growth determines the spatial recovery of coral communities within a reef

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