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Resilience of Octocoral Forests to Catastrophic Storms

After centuries of human-mediated disturbances, Caribbean reef communities are vastly different from those described in the 1950s. Many are functionally dominated by macroalgae, but this community state represents only one of several possibilities into which present-day coral reefs can transition. O...

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Autores principales: Lasker, H. R., Martínez-Quintana, Á., Bramanti, L., Edmunds, P. J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7063042/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32152448
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61238-1
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author Lasker, H. R.
Martínez-Quintana, Á.
Bramanti, L.
Edmunds, P. J.
author_facet Lasker, H. R.
Martínez-Quintana, Á.
Bramanti, L.
Edmunds, P. J.
author_sort Lasker, H. R.
collection PubMed
description After centuries of human-mediated disturbances, Caribbean reef communities are vastly different from those described in the 1950s. Many are functionally dominated by macroalgae, but this community state represents only one of several possibilities into which present-day coral reefs can transition. Octocorals have always been abundant on Caribbean reefs, but increases in their abundance over the last few decades suggest that arborescent octocorals have the potential to expand their populations on reefs that hitherto had been dominated by scleractinians. Here we show that octocoral-dominated communities at three sites on the fringing reefs of St. John, US Virgin Islands, were resilient to the effects of two Category 5 hurricanes in 2017. We describe the dynamics of octocoral communities over five years at three sites on shallow reefs (~9-m depth), and test for the effects of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. The hurricanes depressed the densities of juvenile and adult octocoral colonies as much as 47%. However, there were only weak effects on species richness and the relative abundances of the octocoral species. The hurricanes did not alter patterns of spatial variability in octocoral community structure that existed among sites prior to the storms. The density of octocoral recruits (individuals ≤ 5 cm high) was reduced in the year following the hurricanes, mainly due to a decline in abundance of recruits <0.5 cm, but returned to pre-storm densities in 2019. Persistently high octocoral recruitment provides a mechanism supporting ecological resilience of these communities. Continuing environmental degradation is a threat to all tropical marine communities, but the reefs of St. John illustrate how “octocoral forests” can persist as the structurally dominant community on Caribbean reefs.
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spelling pubmed-70630422020-03-18 Resilience of Octocoral Forests to Catastrophic Storms Lasker, H. R. Martínez-Quintana, Á. Bramanti, L. Edmunds, P. J. Sci Rep Article After centuries of human-mediated disturbances, Caribbean reef communities are vastly different from those described in the 1950s. Many are functionally dominated by macroalgae, but this community state represents only one of several possibilities into which present-day coral reefs can transition. Octocorals have always been abundant on Caribbean reefs, but increases in their abundance over the last few decades suggest that arborescent octocorals have the potential to expand their populations on reefs that hitherto had been dominated by scleractinians. Here we show that octocoral-dominated communities at three sites on the fringing reefs of St. John, US Virgin Islands, were resilient to the effects of two Category 5 hurricanes in 2017. We describe the dynamics of octocoral communities over five years at three sites on shallow reefs (~9-m depth), and test for the effects of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. The hurricanes depressed the densities of juvenile and adult octocoral colonies as much as 47%. However, there were only weak effects on species richness and the relative abundances of the octocoral species. The hurricanes did not alter patterns of spatial variability in octocoral community structure that existed among sites prior to the storms. The density of octocoral recruits (individuals ≤ 5 cm high) was reduced in the year following the hurricanes, mainly due to a decline in abundance of recruits <0.5 cm, but returned to pre-storm densities in 2019. Persistently high octocoral recruitment provides a mechanism supporting ecological resilience of these communities. Continuing environmental degradation is a threat to all tropical marine communities, but the reefs of St. John illustrate how “octocoral forests” can persist as the structurally dominant community on Caribbean reefs. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-03-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7063042/ /pubmed/32152448 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61238-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Lasker, H. R.
Martínez-Quintana, Á.
Bramanti, L.
Edmunds, P. J.
Resilience of Octocoral Forests to Catastrophic Storms
title Resilience of Octocoral Forests to Catastrophic Storms
title_full Resilience of Octocoral Forests to Catastrophic Storms
title_fullStr Resilience of Octocoral Forests to Catastrophic Storms
title_full_unstemmed Resilience of Octocoral Forests to Catastrophic Storms
title_short Resilience of Octocoral Forests to Catastrophic Storms
title_sort resilience of octocoral forests to catastrophic storms
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7063042/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32152448
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61238-1
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