Spatial variation in background mortality among dominant coral taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef
Pisapia, Chiara, and Pratchett, Morgan S. (2014) Spatial variation in background mortality among dominant coral taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. PLoS ONE, 9 (6). e100969. pp. 1-11.
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Abstract
Even in the absence of major disturbances (e.g., cyclones, bleaching), corals are consistently subject to high levels of background mortality, which undermines individual fitness and resilience of coral colonies. Partial mortality may impact coral response to climate change by reducing colony ability to recover between major acute stressors. This study quantified proportion of injured versus uninjured colonies (the prevalence of injuries) and instantaneous measures of areal extent of injuries across individual colonies (the severity of injuries), in four common coral species along the Great Barrier Reef in Australia: massive Porites, encrusting Montipora, Acropora hyacinthus and Pocillopora damicornis. A total of 2,276 adult colonies were surveyed three latitudinal sectors, nine reefs and 27 sites along 1000 km^2 on the Great Barrier Reef. The prevalence of injuries was very high, especially for Porites spp (91%) and Montipora encrusting (85%) and varied significantly, but most lay at small spatial scales (e.g., among colonies positioned <10-m apart). Similarly, severity of background partial mortality was surprisingly high (between 5% and 21%) but varied greatly among colonies within the same site and habitat. This study suggests that intraspecific variation in partial mortality between adjacent colonies may be more important than variation between colonies in different latitudinal sectors or reefs. Differences in the prevalence and severity of background partial mortality have significant ramifications for coral capacity to cope with increasing acute disturbances, such as climate-induced coral bleaching. These data are important for understanding coral responses to increasing stressors, and in particular for predicting their capacity to recover between subsequent disturbances.
| Item ID: | 36173 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1932-6203 |
| Additional Information: | © 2014 Pisapia, Pratchett. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Funders: | Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (ARC CoE Coral Reef Studies), AIMS@JCU |
| Date Deposited: | 12 Nov 2014 12:04 |
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