Stories told by corals, algae, and sea-urchins in a Mesoamerican coral reef: degradation trumps succession

PeerJ

article

Isael Victoria-Salazar¹  Edgar J. González²  Jorge A. Meave²  Miguel-Ángel Ruiz-Zárate¹  Héctor A. Hernández-Arana¹ 

[1] Departamento de Sistemática y Ecología Acuática;Departamento de Ecología y Recursos Naturales, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

关键词: Caribbean;    Coral recruitment;    Coral reefs;    Physical disturbances;    Porites sp.;    Resilience;    Stability;    Ship-grounding;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.14680

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Understanding the mechanisms that allow the permanence of coral reefs and the constancy of their characteristics is necessary to alleviate the effects of chronic environmental changes. After a disturbance, healthy coral reefs display trajectories that allow regaining coral cover and the establishment of framework building corals. Through a comparative approach, in a patch reef partially affected by a ship grounding, we analyzed the successional trajectories in affected and unaffected sectors. Fleshy algae (which do not promote the recruitment of corals) dominated the reef surface irrespective of the impact of the ship grounding incident. Acropora species had near-zero contributions to community structure, whereas non-framework building corals like Porites sp. had a slightly higher recruitment. Cover of coral and calcareous crustose algae decreased over time, and neither the latter nor adult coral colonies had any effect on the occurrence probabilities of small corals. Sea urchin (Diadema antillarum) densities were generally low, and thus unlikely to contribute to reverting algal dominance. The successional trajectories of the community in the impacted and non-impacted sectors of the coral patch reef agree with the inhibition successional model, leading to the development of a degraded state dominated by fleshy algae. It is probable that the stability and resilience of this degraded state are high due to the ability of fleshy algae to monopolize space, along with low coral recovery potential.

【 授权许可】

CC BY