Effects of material type and surface roughness of settlement tiles on macroalgal colonisation and early coral recruitment success
Fong, Jenny, Ramsby, Blake D., Flores, Florita, Dada, Tewodros, Antunes, Elsa, Abdul Wahab, Muhammad Azmi, Severati, Andrea, Negri, Andrew P., and Diaz-Pulido, Guillermo (2024) Effects of material type and surface roughness of settlement tiles on macroalgal colonisation and early coral recruitment success. Coral Reefs, 43. pp. 1083-1096.
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Abstract
Sexual propagation of corals is a promising strategy for coral restoration, but one of the main challenges is the high mortality of coral spat due to competitive interactions with macroalgae during the early life history stages. Optimising the properties of settlement substrates such as material types and surface roughness has the potential to improve the survival of spat by limiting the recruitment and growth of macroalgae. In this study, we assessed the effects of modifying surface roughness across three different tile materials (alumina-based ceramic, calcium carbonate (CaCO3), and concrete) on the settlement success and post-settlement survivorship of Acropora kenti coral larvae in six mesocosm tanks, each with different established macroalgal communities. The macroalgal community compositions on the tiles were significantly different among material types, but not surface roughness, although the type and abundance of macroalgal species were heavily influenced by the established tank communities. Increasing surface roughness did not affect larval settlement success or spat survivorship. Substantially higher larval settlement density was found on concrete tiles (1.92 ± 0.10 larvae cm−2), but spat survival was the highest on CaCO3 tiles (73.4 ± 4.2% survived). Very strong competitive interactions were observed between spat and macroalgae, with overgrowth by the crustose coralline alga Crustaphytum sp. and the brown alga Lobophora sp. being the primary cause of spat mortality. Overall, when taking into account both settlement and survival rates, concrete was the best performing among the tile types tested here.
| Item ID: | 83730 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1432-0975 |
| Keywords: | Competitive interactions ,Coral larvae, Coral restoration, Crustose coralline algae, Early life history stages |
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| Copyright Information: | 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 licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence 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 licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Sep 2024 00:49 |
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