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Unprecedented Disease-Related Coral Mortality in Southeastern Florida
Anomalously high water temperatures, associated with climate change, are increasing the global prevalence of coral bleaching, coral diseases, and coral-mortality events. Coral bleaching and disease outbreaks are often inter-related phenomena, since many coral diseases are a consequence of opportunis...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2016
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4979204/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27506875 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep31374 |
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author | Precht, William F. Gintert, Brooke E. Robbart, Martha L. Fura, Ryan van Woesik, Robert |
author_facet | Precht, William F. Gintert, Brooke E. Robbart, Martha L. Fura, Ryan van Woesik, Robert |
author_sort | Precht, William F. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Anomalously high water temperatures, associated with climate change, are increasing the global prevalence of coral bleaching, coral diseases, and coral-mortality events. Coral bleaching and disease outbreaks are often inter-related phenomena, since many coral diseases are a consequence of opportunistic pathogens that further compromise thermally stressed colonies. Yet, most coral diseases have low prevalence (<5%), and are not considered contagious. By contrast, we document the impact of an extremely high-prevalence outbreak (61%) of white-plague disease at 14 sites off southeastern Florida. White-plague disease was observed near Virginia Key, Florida, in September 2014, and after 12 months had spread 100 km north and 30 km south. The disease outbreak directly followed a high temperature coral-bleaching event and affected at least 13 coral species. Eusmilia fastigiata, Meandrina meandrites, and Dichocoenia stokesi were the most heavily impacted coral species, and were reduced to <3% of their initial population densities. A number of other coral species, including Colpophyllia natans, Pseudodiploria strigosa, Diploria labyrinthiformis, and Orbicella annularis were reduced to <25% of their initial densities. The high prevalence of disease, the number of susceptible species, and the high mortality of corals affected suggests this disease outbreak is arguably one of the most lethal ever recorded on a contemporary coral reef. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4979204 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49792042016-08-19 Unprecedented Disease-Related Coral Mortality in Southeastern Florida Precht, William F. Gintert, Brooke E. Robbart, Martha L. Fura, Ryan van Woesik, Robert Sci Rep Article Anomalously high water temperatures, associated with climate change, are increasing the global prevalence of coral bleaching, coral diseases, and coral-mortality events. Coral bleaching and disease outbreaks are often inter-related phenomena, since many coral diseases are a consequence of opportunistic pathogens that further compromise thermally stressed colonies. Yet, most coral diseases have low prevalence (<5%), and are not considered contagious. By contrast, we document the impact of an extremely high-prevalence outbreak (61%) of white-plague disease at 14 sites off southeastern Florida. White-plague disease was observed near Virginia Key, Florida, in September 2014, and after 12 months had spread 100 km north and 30 km south. The disease outbreak directly followed a high temperature coral-bleaching event and affected at least 13 coral species. Eusmilia fastigiata, Meandrina meandrites, and Dichocoenia stokesi were the most heavily impacted coral species, and were reduced to <3% of their initial population densities. A number of other coral species, including Colpophyllia natans, Pseudodiploria strigosa, Diploria labyrinthiformis, and Orbicella annularis were reduced to <25% of their initial densities. The high prevalence of disease, the number of susceptible species, and the high mortality of corals affected suggests this disease outbreak is arguably one of the most lethal ever recorded on a contemporary coral reef. Nature Publishing Group 2016-08-10 /pmc/articles/PMC4979204/ /pubmed/27506875 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep31374 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Precht, William F. Gintert, Brooke E. Robbart, Martha L. Fura, Ryan van Woesik, Robert Unprecedented Disease-Related Coral Mortality in Southeastern Florida |
title | Unprecedented Disease-Related Coral Mortality in Southeastern Florida |
title_full | Unprecedented Disease-Related Coral Mortality in Southeastern Florida |
title_fullStr | Unprecedented Disease-Related Coral Mortality in Southeastern Florida |
title_full_unstemmed | Unprecedented Disease-Related Coral Mortality in Southeastern Florida |
title_short | Unprecedented Disease-Related Coral Mortality in Southeastern Florida |
title_sort | unprecedented disease-related coral mortality in southeastern florida |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4979204/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27506875 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep31374 |
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