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Decline in coral cover and flattening of the reefs around Mauritius (1998–2010)

Coral reefs are degrading through the impacts of multiple anthropogenic stressors. How are coral reef communities going to change and how to protect them for future generations are important conservation questions. Using coral reef data from Mauritius, we examined changes in cover in 23 benthic grou...

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Autores principales: Elliott, Jennifer A., Patterson, Mark R., Staub, Caroline G., Koonjul, Meera, Elliott, Stephen M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6275115/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30519511
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6014
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author Elliott, Jennifer A.
Patterson, Mark R.
Staub, Caroline G.
Koonjul, Meera
Elliott, Stephen M.
author_facet Elliott, Jennifer A.
Patterson, Mark R.
Staub, Caroline G.
Koonjul, Meera
Elliott, Stephen M.
author_sort Elliott, Jennifer A.
collection PubMed
description Coral reefs are degrading through the impacts of multiple anthropogenic stressors. How are coral reef communities going to change and how to protect them for future generations are important conservation questions. Using coral reef data from Mauritius, we examined changes in cover in 23 benthic groups for a 13-yr period and at 15 sites. Moreover, we determined which land-based stressor out of four (human population, agriculture, tourism, rainfall) correlated the most with the observed changes in coral reef cover. Among the stony corals, Acropora corals appeared to be the most impacted, decreasing in cover at many sites. However, the non-Acropora encrusting group increased in cover at several sites. The increase in abundance of dead corals and rubble at some sites also supported the observations of stony coral decline during the study period. Additionally, the decline in stony corals appeared to be more pronounced in second half of the study period for all sites suggesting that a global factor rather than a local factor was responsible for this decline. There was little change in cover for the other benthic groups, some of which were quite rare. Human population was significantly correlated with changes in coral reef cover for 11 sites, followed by tourism and agriculture. Rainfall, a proxy for runoff, did not appear to affect coral reef cover. Overall, our results showed that there has been a decline of stony coral cover especially the ones with complex morphologies, which in turn suggest that coral reefs around Mauritius have experienced a decline in habitat complexity during the study period. Our study also suggests that humans are an important factor contributing to the demise of coral reefs around the island.
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spelling pubmed-62751152018-12-05 Decline in coral cover and flattening of the reefs around Mauritius (1998–2010) Elliott, Jennifer A. Patterson, Mark R. Staub, Caroline G. Koonjul, Meera Elliott, Stephen M. PeerJ Conservation Biology Coral reefs are degrading through the impacts of multiple anthropogenic stressors. How are coral reef communities going to change and how to protect them for future generations are important conservation questions. Using coral reef data from Mauritius, we examined changes in cover in 23 benthic groups for a 13-yr period and at 15 sites. Moreover, we determined which land-based stressor out of four (human population, agriculture, tourism, rainfall) correlated the most with the observed changes in coral reef cover. Among the stony corals, Acropora corals appeared to be the most impacted, decreasing in cover at many sites. However, the non-Acropora encrusting group increased in cover at several sites. The increase in abundance of dead corals and rubble at some sites also supported the observations of stony coral decline during the study period. Additionally, the decline in stony corals appeared to be more pronounced in second half of the study period for all sites suggesting that a global factor rather than a local factor was responsible for this decline. There was little change in cover for the other benthic groups, some of which were quite rare. Human population was significantly correlated with changes in coral reef cover for 11 sites, followed by tourism and agriculture. Rainfall, a proxy for runoff, did not appear to affect coral reef cover. Overall, our results showed that there has been a decline of stony coral cover especially the ones with complex morphologies, which in turn suggest that coral reefs around Mauritius have experienced a decline in habitat complexity during the study period. Our study also suggests that humans are an important factor contributing to the demise of coral reefs around the island. PeerJ Inc. 2018-11-29 /pmc/articles/PMC6275115/ /pubmed/30519511 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6014 Text en ©2018 Elliott et al. 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 Conservation Biology
Elliott, Jennifer A.
Patterson, Mark R.
Staub, Caroline G.
Koonjul, Meera
Elliott, Stephen M.
Decline in coral cover and flattening of the reefs around Mauritius (1998–2010)
title Decline in coral cover and flattening of the reefs around Mauritius (1998–2010)
title_full Decline in coral cover and flattening of the reefs around Mauritius (1998–2010)
title_fullStr Decline in coral cover and flattening of the reefs around Mauritius (1998–2010)
title_full_unstemmed Decline in coral cover and flattening of the reefs around Mauritius (1998–2010)
title_short Decline in coral cover and flattening of the reefs around Mauritius (1998–2010)
title_sort decline in coral cover and flattening of the reefs around mauritius (1998–2010)
topic Conservation Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6275115/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30519511
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6014
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