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Pleistocene reefs of the Egyptian Red Sea: environmental change and community persistence

The fossil record of Red Sea fringing reefs provides an opportunity to study the history of coral-reef survival and recovery in the context of extreme environmental change. The Middle Pleistocene, the Late Pleistocene, and modern reefs represent three periods of reef growth separated by glacial low...

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Autor principal: Casazza, Lorraine R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5493035/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28674659
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3504
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author Casazza, Lorraine R.
author_facet Casazza, Lorraine R.
author_sort Casazza, Lorraine R.
collection PubMed
description The fossil record of Red Sea fringing reefs provides an opportunity to study the history of coral-reef survival and recovery in the context of extreme environmental change. The Middle Pleistocene, the Late Pleistocene, and modern reefs represent three periods of reef growth separated by glacial low stands during which conditions became difficult for symbiotic reef fauna. Coral diversity and paleoenvironments of eight Middle and Late Pleistocene fossil terraces are described and characterized here. Pleistocene reef zones closely resemble reef zones of the modern Red Sea. All but one species identified from Middle and Late Pleistocene outcrops are also found on modern Red Sea reefs despite the possible extinction of most coral over two-thirds of the Red Sea basin during glacial low stands. Refugia in the Gulf of Aqaba and southern Red Sea may have allowed for the persistence of coral communities across glaciation events. Stability of coral communities across these extreme climate events indicates that even small populations of survivors can repopulate large areas given appropriate water conditions and time.
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spelling pubmed-54930352017-07-03 Pleistocene reefs of the Egyptian Red Sea: environmental change and community persistence Casazza, Lorraine R. PeerJ Biodiversity The fossil record of Red Sea fringing reefs provides an opportunity to study the history of coral-reef survival and recovery in the context of extreme environmental change. The Middle Pleistocene, the Late Pleistocene, and modern reefs represent three periods of reef growth separated by glacial low stands during which conditions became difficult for symbiotic reef fauna. Coral diversity and paleoenvironments of eight Middle and Late Pleistocene fossil terraces are described and characterized here. Pleistocene reef zones closely resemble reef zones of the modern Red Sea. All but one species identified from Middle and Late Pleistocene outcrops are also found on modern Red Sea reefs despite the possible extinction of most coral over two-thirds of the Red Sea basin during glacial low stands. Refugia in the Gulf of Aqaba and southern Red Sea may have allowed for the persistence of coral communities across glaciation events. Stability of coral communities across these extreme climate events indicates that even small populations of survivors can repopulate large areas given appropriate water conditions and time. PeerJ Inc. 2017-06-28 /pmc/articles/PMC5493035/ /pubmed/28674659 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3504 Text en © 2017 Casazza http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://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 Biodiversity
Casazza, Lorraine R.
Pleistocene reefs of the Egyptian Red Sea: environmental change and community persistence
title Pleistocene reefs of the Egyptian Red Sea: environmental change and community persistence
title_full Pleistocene reefs of the Egyptian Red Sea: environmental change and community persistence
title_fullStr Pleistocene reefs of the Egyptian Red Sea: environmental change and community persistence
title_full_unstemmed Pleistocene reefs of the Egyptian Red Sea: environmental change and community persistence
title_short Pleistocene reefs of the Egyptian Red Sea: environmental change and community persistence
title_sort pleistocene reefs of the egyptian red sea: environmental change and community persistence
topic Biodiversity
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5493035/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28674659
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3504
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