Acanthaster: effect on coral reef growth in panama

Analysis of data on coral abundance and growth, and the population size (26 individuals per hectare) and feeding rate of Acanthaster indicates that Pocillopora reefs on the Pacific coast of Panama are undergoing vigorous growth in the presence of this predator. Prediction of the effects of a population increase in Acanthaster to plague proportions (2.5 times that presently observed) suggests that reefs could still maintain a positive growth. However, Acanthaster at ten times the present population density would lead to rapid destruction of reefs. It is argued that coral destruction due to Acanthaster represents only one of several factors affecting coral reef progression.     

潜水旅游对珊瑚礁生态系统影响研究的进展

早期潜水活动曾被认为是一种经济价值高且对珊瑚礁影响较小的生态旅游项目,但随着潜水旅游逐渐盛行,诸多研究结果表明,全世界潜水区的珊瑚礁均出现了不同程度的退化,一些热门潜水旅游区每年接纳的游客数量甚至远超出珊瑚礁的生态承受极限.笔者对与珊瑚礁生态系统与潜水旅游承载能力相关的研究结果进行了统计分析,总结了潜水活动影响珊瑚礁的...     

Community structure of coral reefs on opposite sides of the isthmus of panama

Competition for space amon reef corals includes interspecific destruction by extracoelenteric digestion., rapid growth. and Overtopping. No Caribbean species excela in all strategies, and on western Caribbean coral reefs there is a positive correlation between coral abudance and diversity. On eastern Pacific coral reefs, however. Pocillopora damicornis excludes other corals, and on these reefs there is an inverse relation between coral abundance and diversity, except in areas where distrubances, such as Acanthaster predation offset space monopolization.     

Climate change,human impacts,and the resilience of coral reefs

The diversity, frequency, and scale of human impacts on coral reefs are increasing to the extent that reefs are threatened globally. Projected increases in carbon dioxide and temperature over the next 50 years exceed the conditions under which coral reefs have flourished over the past half-million years. However, reefs will change rather than disappear entirely, with some species already showing far greater tolerance to climate change and coral bleaching than others. International integration of management strategies that support reef resilience need to be vigorously implemented, and complemented by strong policy decisions to reduce the rate of global warming.     

Zonation of uplifted pleistocene coral reefs on barbados, west indies

The coral species composition of uplifted Pleistocene reefs on Barbados is very similar to Recent West Indian reefs. Acropora palmata, Acropora cervicornis, and Montastrea annularis are qtuantitatively the most important of the coral species.     

Growth of Western Australian corals in the anthropocene

Anthropogenic increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide lead to warmer sea surface temperatures and altered ocean chemistry. Experimental evidence suggests that coral calcification decreases as aragonite saturation drops but increases as temperatures rise toward thresholds optimal for coral growth. In situ studies have documented alarming recent declines in calcification rates on several tropical coral reef ecosystems. We show there is no widespread pattern of consistent decline in calcification rates of massive Porites during the 20th century on reefs spanning an 11° latitudinal range in the southeast Indian Ocean off Western Australia. Increasing calcification rates on the high-latitude reefs contrast with the downward trajectory reported for corals on Australia's Great Barrier Reef and provide additional evidence that recent changes in coral calcification are responses to temperature rather than ocean acidification.     

Long-term region-wide declines in Caribbean corals

We report a massive region-wide decline of corals across the entire Caribbean basin, with the average hard coral cover on reefs being reduced by 80%, from about 50% to 10% cover, in three decades. Our meta-analysis shows that patterns of change in coral cover are variable across time periods but largely consistent across subregions, suggesting that local causes have operated with some degree of synchrony on a region-wide scale. Although the rate of coral loss has slowed in the past decade compared to the 1980s, significant declines are persisting. The ability of Caribbean coral reefs to cope with future local and global environmental change may be irretrievably compromised.     

Caribbean reef development was independent of coral diversity over 28 million years

The relationship between natural variations in coral species diversity, reef development, and ecosystem function on coral reefs is poorly understood. Recent coral diversity varies 10-fold among geographic regions, but rates of reef growth are broadly similar, suggesting that diversity is unimportant for reef development. Differences in diversity may reflect regional differences in long-term biotic history in addition to environmental conditions. Using a combination of new and published fossil and stratigraphic data, we compared changes in coral diversity and reef development within the tropical western Atlantic over the past 28 million years. Reef development was unrelated to coral diversity, and the largest reef tracts formed after extinction had reduced diversity by 50%. High diversity is thus not essential for the growth and persistence of coral reefs.     

Local replenishment of coral reef fish populations in a marine reserve

The scale of larval dispersal of marine organisms is important for the design of networks of marine protected areas. We examined the fate of coral reef fish larvae produced at a small island reserve, using a mass-marking method based on maternal transmission of stable isotopes to offspring. Approximately 60% of settled juveniles were spawned at the island, for species with both short (<2 weeks) and long (>1 month) pelagic larval durations. If natal homing of larvae is a common life-history strategy, the appropriate spatial scales for the management and conservation of coral reefs are likely to be much smaller than previously assumed.     

Homeward sound

Despite spending weeks at sea as larvae, potentially scattered over many kilometers, young coral reef fish find suitable settlement habitat and in some cases return to their natal reefs. We report that some dominant families of larval reef fish use the sounds made by fish and shrimp resident on reefs to help them locate and settle on reefs and that some fish groups use specific components of the reef sound to guide their behavior. These findings could offer potential for active management of reef fisheries.     

Global trajectories of the long-term decline of coral reef ecosystems

Degradation of coral reef ecosystems began centuries ago, but there is no global summary of the magnitude of change. We compiled records, extending back thousands of years, of the status and trends of seven major guilds of carnivores, herbivores, and architectural species from 14 regions. Large animals declined before small animals and architectural species, and Atlantic reefs declined before reefs in the Red Sea and Australia, but the trajectories of decline were markedly similar worldwide. All reefs were substantially degraded long before outbreaks of coral disease and bleaching. Regardless of these new threats, reefs will not survive without immediate protection from human exploitation over large spatial scales.     

Projecting coral reef futures under global warming and ocean acidification

Many physiological responses in present-day coral reefs to climate change are interpreted as consistent with the imminent disappearance of modern reefs globally because of annual mass bleaching events, carbonate dissolution, and insufficient time for substantial evolutionary responses. Emerging evidence for variability in the coral calcification response to acidification, geographical variation in bleaching susceptibility and recovery, responses to past climate change, and potential rates of adaptation to rapid warming supports an alternative scenario in which reef degradation occurs with greater temporal and spatial heterogeneity than current projections suggest. Reducing uncertainty in projecting coral reef futures requires improved understanding of past responses to rapid climate change; physiological responses to interacting factors, such as temperature, acidification, and nutrients; and the costs and constraints imposed by acclimation and adaptation.     

ENSO drove 2500-year collapse of eastern Pacific coral reefs

Cores of coral reef frameworks along an upwelling gradient in Panamá show that reef ecosystems in the tropical eastern Pacific collapsed for 2500 years, representing as much as 40% of their history, beginning about 4000 years ago. The principal cause of this millennial-scale hiatus in reef growth was increased variability of the El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and its coupling with the Intertropical Convergence Zone. The hiatus was a Pacific-wide phenomenon with an underlying climatology similar to probable scenarios for the next century. Global climate change is probably driving eastern Pacific reefs toward another regional collapse.     

Deposit from a giant wave on the island of lanai, hawaii

Limestone-bearing gravel, the newly named Hulopoe Gravel, blankets the coastal slopes on Lanai. The deposit, which reaches a maximum altitude of 326 meters, formerly was believed to have been deposited along several different ancient marine strandlines, but dated submerged coral reefs and tide-gauge measurements indicate that the southeastern Hawaiian Islands sink so fast that former worldwide high stands of the sea now lie beneath local sea level. Evidence indicates that the Hulopoe Gravel and similar deposits on nearby islands were deposited during the Pleistocene by a giant wave generated by a submarine landslide on a sea scarp south of Lanai.     

Rapid flooding of the sunda shelf: A late-glacial sea-level record

The increase in sea level from the last glacial maximum has been derived from a siliciclastic system on the tectonically stable Sunda Shelf in Southeast Asia. The time from 21 to 14 thousand calendar years before the present has been poorly covered in other records. The record generally confirms sea-level reconstructions from coral reefs. The rise of sea level during meltwater pulse 1A was as much as 16 meters within 300 years (14.6 to 14.3 thousand years ago).     

Critical depth for the survival of coral islands: effects on the hawaiian archipelago

Coral islands drown when sea level rise exceeds the maximum potential of coral reefs to grow upward (about 10 millimeters per year). During the Holocene transgression (18,000 years ago to present) sea levels rose at rates of up to 10 to 20 millimeters per year, and most coral island reefs situated deeper than a critical depth of30 to 40 meters below present day sea level drowned. Coral islands that did not drown during the Holocene transgression apparently all developed on antecedent foundations shallower than critical depth. During low stands in sea level during the Pleistocene, these islands were elevated and subject to subaerial erosion. Today, in the Hawaiian Archipelago, the depth of drowned banks is inversely related to summit area; smaller banks are progressively deeper, evidently because of erosional truncation during low sea level stands. Bank summit area may therefore be an important factor determining the failure or success of coral islands.     

Insular erosion, isostasy, and subsidence

Organic reefs and shore erosion record the intersection of sea level with islands. From this record it is possible to reconstruct the history of vertical movement of the islands and the adjacent deep sea floor, including midplate swells. As judged by coral thickness, islands with barrier reefs sink as though they were on thermally youthful crust regardless of the actual age. Reefless islands do not sink until truncated by erosion. Apparently, thermal subsidence is balanced by isostatic uplift in response to erosion. Barrier reefs prevent wave erosion of encircled volcanoes and capture products of stream erosion so that isostatic uplift is eliminated. Insular shelves widen initially at rates of 0.6 to 1.7 kilometers per million years; the rates decrease with time. Thus the subsidence of islands depends on the size of the is land and the presence of reefs, and it may not always be the same as that of the surrounding oceanic crust.     

中沙和南沙群岛密点胡椒鲷的种群分析

对中国南海中沙群岛和南沙群岛采集的2个珊瑚礁栖性鱼类密点胡椒鲷(Plectorhynchus gaterinus)群体共19尾的mtDNA控制区核苷酸序列进行了扩增分析,获得了长度为510bp的同源序列,2个群体中共检测到变异位点31个,占全部序列的6.08%,2个群体共检测到15种单倍型。AMOVA分析表明,群体间的遗传变异仅占总遗传变异的1.97%,而98.03%的遗传变异源于群体内。2个密点胡椒鲷群体间的分化指数(Fst)仅为0.012,群体分化程度很低。以线粒体DNA控制区序列构建的NJ树揭示,2个群体的个体基本是随机交叉聚类,各群体内的个体均未单独成群,不能形成明显的类群分支。以上结果表明,密点胡椒鲷群体间遗传相似性较大,且存在较强的基因交流,尽管中沙和南沙群岛地理隔离明显,距离较大,但两个群岛的密点胡椒鲷地理分化不明显,仍可认为是一个大的种群。     

Calcium carbonate production, coral reef growth, and sea level change

Shallow, seaward portions of modern coral reefs produce about 4 kilograms of calcium carbonate per square meter per year, and protected areas produce about 0.8 kilogram per square meter per year. The difference is probably largely a function of water motion. The more rapid rate, equivalent to a maximum vertical accretion of 3 to 5 millimeters per year, places an upper limit on the potential of modern coral reef communities to create a significant vertical structure on a rising sea.     

南海重要珊瑚礁过渡性水域软骨鱼类的组成与分布

2004年5—7月和2005年3—4月采用深水三重刺网在南海的羚羊礁、华光礁、银砾滩、东岛、滨湄滩、排洪滩、本固暗沙、比微暗沙、武勇暗沙、海鸠暗沙、双子群礁、中业群礁、鲎藤礁、美济礁、仁爱礁、仙宾礁、南方浅滩、棕滩、大渊滩、永署礁、南薰礁、牛轭礁、道明群礁等23座重要珊瑚礁过渡性水域进行了2个航次专业调查，其中有21座岛礁共渔获到7目15科33种408尾软骨鱼类，而美济礁和南方浅滩没有渔获到软骨鱼类。根据调查资料，通过物种各分类阶元的分布、优势度（IRI）和单位努力量渔获量等几个方面分析南海重要珊瑚礁过渡性水域软骨鱼类的组成与分布，旨在为南海珊瑚礁渔业资源的开发和管理提供科学依据。结果表明，西沙群岛的重量单位努力量渔获量范围为73～499kg／10^4m^2，其优势种类是迈氏条尾虹、灰六鳃鲨和黑梢真鲨；中沙群岛的重量单位努力量渔获量范围为114～245kg／10^4m^2，其优势种类是迈氏条尾虹、灰三齿鲨；南沙群岛除了美济礁和南方浅滩外其重量单位努力量渔获量范围为51～846kg／10^4m^2，其优势种类是黑梢真鲨、灰三齿鲨。