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Coral reef degradation at an atoll of the Western Colombian Caribbean

Coral reef decline is an issue of concern around the globe. Remote and uninhabited coral areas are not exempt from facing changes in species composition and functionality due to global drivers. Quitasueño is a remote atoll within the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, in the Southwestern Caribbean Sea. To...

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Autores principales: Rivas, Natalia, Gómez, Carlos E., Millán, Santiago, Mejía-Quintero, Katherine, Chasqui, Luis
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10105559/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37070090
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.15057
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author Rivas, Natalia
Gómez, Carlos E.
Millán, Santiago
Mejía-Quintero, Katherine
Chasqui, Luis
author_facet Rivas, Natalia
Gómez, Carlos E.
Millán, Santiago
Mejía-Quintero, Katherine
Chasqui, Luis
author_sort Rivas, Natalia
collection PubMed
description Coral reef decline is an issue of concern around the globe. Remote and uninhabited coral areas are not exempt from facing changes in species composition and functionality due to global drivers. Quitasueño is a remote atoll within the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, in the Southwestern Caribbean Sea. To evaluate the current status of the coral reefs in Quitasueño we sampled 120 stations through Rapid Ecological Assessment and evaluated four stations through Planar Point Intercept to compare the current percent cover of benthic groups with previous studies in the area. We found pronounced changes in coral and macroalgae covers in time, and great conspicuousness of multiple conditions of deterioration along Quitasueño, including diseases, coral predation, and aggression and invasion of coral colonies by macroalgae and sponges. The reef ecosystem seems to be facing a phase shift, in which the benthic cover previously dominated by hard corals is currently dominated by fleshy macroalgae. It is essential to evaluate the possible drivers of the extent of degradation of Quitasueño to understand the process of deterioration and mitigate the impacts.
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spelling pubmed-101055592023-04-16 Coral reef degradation at an atoll of the Western Colombian Caribbean Rivas, Natalia Gómez, Carlos E. Millán, Santiago Mejía-Quintero, Katherine Chasqui, Luis PeerJ Conservation Biology Coral reef decline is an issue of concern around the globe. Remote and uninhabited coral areas are not exempt from facing changes in species composition and functionality due to global drivers. Quitasueño is a remote atoll within the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve, in the Southwestern Caribbean Sea. To evaluate the current status of the coral reefs in Quitasueño we sampled 120 stations through Rapid Ecological Assessment and evaluated four stations through Planar Point Intercept to compare the current percent cover of benthic groups with previous studies in the area. We found pronounced changes in coral and macroalgae covers in time, and great conspicuousness of multiple conditions of deterioration along Quitasueño, including diseases, coral predation, and aggression and invasion of coral colonies by macroalgae and sponges. The reef ecosystem seems to be facing a phase shift, in which the benthic cover previously dominated by hard corals is currently dominated by fleshy macroalgae. It is essential to evaluate the possible drivers of the extent of degradation of Quitasueño to understand the process of deterioration and mitigate the impacts. PeerJ Inc. 2023-04-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10105559/ /pubmed/37070090 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.15057 Text en © 2023 Rivas et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Conservation Biology
Rivas, Natalia
Gómez, Carlos E.
Millán, Santiago
Mejía-Quintero, Katherine
Chasqui, Luis
Coral reef degradation at an atoll of the Western Colombian Caribbean
title Coral reef degradation at an atoll of the Western Colombian Caribbean
title_full Coral reef degradation at an atoll of the Western Colombian Caribbean
title_fullStr Coral reef degradation at an atoll of the Western Colombian Caribbean
title_full_unstemmed Coral reef degradation at an atoll of the Western Colombian Caribbean
title_short Coral reef degradation at an atoll of the Western Colombian Caribbean
title_sort coral reef degradation at an atoll of the western colombian caribbean
topic Conservation Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10105559/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37070090
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.15057
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