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Depth-dependent mortality of reef corals following a severe bleaching event: implications for thermal refuges and population recovery
Coral bleaching caused by rising sea temperature is a primary cause of coral reef degradation. However, bleaching patterns often show significant spatial variability, therefore identifying locations where local conditions may provide thermal refuges is a high conservation priority. Coral bleaching m...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
F1000Research
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3938179/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24627789 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.2-187.v3 |
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author | Bridge, Tom C. L. Hoey, Andrew S Campbell, Stuart J Muttaqin, Efin Rudi, Edi Fadli, Nur Baird, Andrew H |
author_facet | Bridge, Tom C. L. Hoey, Andrew S Campbell, Stuart J Muttaqin, Efin Rudi, Edi Fadli, Nur Baird, Andrew H |
author_sort | Bridge, Tom C. L. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Coral bleaching caused by rising sea temperature is a primary cause of coral reef degradation. However, bleaching patterns often show significant spatial variability, therefore identifying locations where local conditions may provide thermal refuges is a high conservation priority. Coral bleaching mortality often diminishes with increasing depth, but clear depth zonation of coral communities and putative limited overlap in species composition between deep and shallow reef habitats has led to the conclusion that deeper reef habitats will provide limited refuge from bleaching for most species. Here, we show that coral mortality following a severe bleaching event diminished sharply with depth. Bleaching-induced mortality of Acropora was approximately 90% at 0-2m, 60% at 3-4 m, yet at 6-8m there was negligible mortality. Importantly, at least two-thirds of the shallow-water (2-3 m) Acropora assemblage had a depth range that straddled the transition from high to low mortality. Cold-water upwelling may have contributed to the lower mortality observed in all but the shallowest depths. Our results demonstrate that, in this instance, depth provided a refuge for individuals from a high proportion of species in this Acropora-dominated assemblage. The persistence of deeper populations may provide a critical source of propagules to assist recovery of adjacent shallow-water reefs. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3938179 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | F1000Research |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-39381792014-03-12 Depth-dependent mortality of reef corals following a severe bleaching event: implications for thermal refuges and population recovery Bridge, Tom C. L. Hoey, Andrew S Campbell, Stuart J Muttaqin, Efin Rudi, Edi Fadli, Nur Baird, Andrew H F1000Res Research Article Coral bleaching caused by rising sea temperature is a primary cause of coral reef degradation. However, bleaching patterns often show significant spatial variability, therefore identifying locations where local conditions may provide thermal refuges is a high conservation priority. Coral bleaching mortality often diminishes with increasing depth, but clear depth zonation of coral communities and putative limited overlap in species composition between deep and shallow reef habitats has led to the conclusion that deeper reef habitats will provide limited refuge from bleaching for most species. Here, we show that coral mortality following a severe bleaching event diminished sharply with depth. Bleaching-induced mortality of Acropora was approximately 90% at 0-2m, 60% at 3-4 m, yet at 6-8m there was negligible mortality. Importantly, at least two-thirds of the shallow-water (2-3 m) Acropora assemblage had a depth range that straddled the transition from high to low mortality. Cold-water upwelling may have contributed to the lower mortality observed in all but the shallowest depths. Our results demonstrate that, in this instance, depth provided a refuge for individuals from a high proportion of species in this Acropora-dominated assemblage. The persistence of deeper populations may provide a critical source of propagules to assist recovery of adjacent shallow-water reefs. F1000Research 2014-02-19 /pmc/articles/PMC3938179/ /pubmed/24627789 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.2-187.v3 Text en Copyright: © 2014 Bridge TCL et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Data associated with the article are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication). |
spellingShingle | Research Article Bridge, Tom C. L. Hoey, Andrew S Campbell, Stuart J Muttaqin, Efin Rudi, Edi Fadli, Nur Baird, Andrew H Depth-dependent mortality of reef corals following a severe bleaching event: implications for thermal refuges and population recovery |
title | Depth-dependent mortality of reef corals following a severe bleaching event: implications for thermal refuges and population recovery |
title_full | Depth-dependent mortality of reef corals following a severe bleaching event: implications for thermal refuges and population recovery |
title_fullStr | Depth-dependent mortality of reef corals following a severe bleaching event: implications for thermal refuges and population recovery |
title_full_unstemmed | Depth-dependent mortality of reef corals following a severe bleaching event: implications for thermal refuges and population recovery |
title_short | Depth-dependent mortality of reef corals following a severe bleaching event: implications for thermal refuges and population recovery |
title_sort | depth-dependent mortality of reef corals following a severe bleaching event: implications for thermal refuges and population recovery |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3938179/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24627789 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.2-187.v3 |
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