Determinants of Community Structure and Resilence on Tropical Eastern Pacific Coral Reefs PDF Download

Author: Matthew John Wartian
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 506

View

Book Description

Author: Peter W. Glynn
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9401774994
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 666

View

Book Description
This book documents and examines the state of health of coral reefs in the eastern tropical Pacific region. It touches on the occurrence of coral reefs in the waters of surrounding countries, and it explores their biogeography, biodiversity and condition relative to the El Niño southern oscillation and human impacts. Additionally contained within is a field that presents information on many of the species presented in the preceding chapters.

Author: Catalina Gomez Gomez
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

View

Book Description
"Coral systems, which serve a great variety of environmental services, are rapidly declining at a global scale. It is therefore essential that we detect changes at the local scale and attribute them to natural or anthropogenic factors. It is also important to increase our knowledge of understudied but ecologically important species in order to be able to explain and predict diversity changes in marine sessile communities. In this thesis I use monitoring, observation, experiments, and modeling to detect temporal diversity changes in scleractinian coral species (reef building corals). I also study the reproductive biology of common octocoral species (non-reef building corals), identify factors that limit octocoral recruitment, and estimate stability and resilience properties of octocoral communities under different oceanographic scenarios in the gulfs of Panama (GP) and Chiriqui (GC) off the Pacific Coast of Panama. In Chapter 1 I analyze coral reef monitoring data gathered from 17 reefs over a twelve year period and detect a significant 4% decline in coral species abundance at the national, gulf, and reef scales, as well as significant changes in species richness and community structure at different spatial scales. Temporal diversity trends were explained by small but frequent positive water temperature anomalies and annual variation. Heat-sensitive coral species were the most important contributors. Chapters 2 through 4 are devoted to studying biological and ecological aspects of octocoral species, which have been ignored by science for over a century. In Chapter 2 I study the reproductive output and timing of three common octocoral species, finding that reproductive output is not correlated to previously reported population dynamics; oocyte development and spawning are instead correlated to water temperature, and different species spawn in different seasons. In Chapter 3 I use clearing experiments conducted in eight sites to test whether octocoral recruitment is related to adult density and space availability. I find that recruitment is related to adult density but only if space is not a limiting factor, as it is in the Gulf of Chiriqui. In Chapter 4 I create a Markov Chain model based on transition probabilities of octocoral colonies to estimate how stable and resilient octocoral communities are on each of the gulfs. I found that communities in the GC are three times more stable than the ones in the GP, but they are 1.6 times less resilient due to the space-limited recruitment seen only in this gulf. This thesis contributes to the scientific knowledge of the two main marine foundation species found in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. It also serves as a baseline for understanding future diversity trends, especially after the strong El Niño event in 2015-2016. " --

Author: Ranjan Muthukrishnan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 115

View

Book Description
Coral reefs have seen precipitous declines across the globe that are generally associated with transitions to reefs dominated by algae. Understanding the causes and dynamics of these transitions is of critical importance for the implementation of effective management strategies to protect reefs that remain healthy and to recover degraded reefs. To address these issues I evaluated the potential resilience of coral reefs at Isla Contadora, Panamá in the Easter Tropical Pacific (ETP), to different anthropogenic stresses with an integrated approach using empirical and modeling methods. Direct community response to stressors was investigated with experimental manipulations of herbivore abundance, nutrient supply and sediment loading. These experiments showed that any of the three stressors could push reefs toward algal dominance but that the effects of particular stressors were variable and highly dependent on the environmental context in which they were applied. In addition, I identified that herbivory rates and nutrient availability, two critical controls of community structure, vary in response to the local abundance of coral and algae. Because both processes are stronger in the community state they support they act as positive feedbacks pushing reefs toward divergent community states and producing patchy spatial patterning. Using these empirical results I developed a spatially explicit simulation model that incorporated and tested if the environmental conditions measured in the ETP supported alternative stable states (ASS). ASS theory is a dominant conceptual framework for understanding processes that support resilience of ecological communities in the face of anthropogenic disturbance, and, by combining empirical and modeling methods, I propose a rapid and non-destructive method to evaluate ASS in fragile habitats. Using the model I demonstrated that the presence of positive feedback are essential for ASS and the strength of those feedbacks is the critical factor that separates systems with phase shifts and ASS. With data from Isla Contadora I was also able to identify the particular conditions under which ETP reefs should display ASS and demonstrated that the reefs at Isla Contadora exist within that range suggesting they exist as ASS.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 924

View

Book Description

Author: Michael Sweet
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889634183
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 261

View

Book Description
Every year, 10 outstanding Research Topics are selected as finalists of the Frontiers Spotlight Award. These shortlisted article collections each address a globally important field of research with the potential to drastically impact our future. They bring together the latest, cutting-edge research to advance their fields, present new solutions and foster essential, large-scale collaborations across multiple disciplines and research groups worldwide. This international research prize recognizes the most innovative and impactful topics and the winning team of editors receives $100,000 to organize an international scientific conference on the theme of their successful collection.

Author: R.H. Karlson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781402010460
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 272

View

Book Description
This book focuses on the dynamical processes influencing the structure of coral communities, some of the most biologically diverse communities on earth. A variety of biological and physical processes operating across an enormous range of spatiotemporal scales are highlighted (e.g., niche partitioning, biological interactions, disturbance phenomena, large-scale tectonic, eustatic, climatic, and oceanographic processes). The focus on the community provides a framework for presenting some of the best examples from the literature using multiple taxonomic groups (e.g., corals, fishes, encrusting invertebrates).

Author: Arturo Dominici Arosemena
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reef fishes
Languages : en
Pages : 141

View

Book Description

Author:
Publisher: IUCN
ISBN: 2831709504
Category : Coral reef conservation
Languages : en
Pages : 56

View

Book Description
Provides synthesis of current scientific knowledge on coral reef resilience and resistance to bleaching, and highlights resilience and resistance factors and some knowledge gaps. Discusses tools and strategies to enhance resilience, including the use of well-designed networks of marine protected areas and integrated coastal management.

Author:
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128215305
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 514

View

Book Description
Population Dynamics of the Reef Crisis, Volume 87 in the Advances in Marine Biology series, updates on many topics that will appeal to postgraduates and researchers in marine biology, fisheries science, ecology, zoology and biological oceanography. Chapters in this new release cover SCTL disease and coral population dynamics in S-Florida, Spatial dynamics of juvenile corals in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, Surprising stability in sea urchin populations following shifts to algal dominance on heavily bleached reefs, Biophysical model of population connectivity in the Persian Gulf, Population dynamics of 20-year decline in clownfish anemones on coral reefs at Eilat, northern Red Sea, and much more. Reviews articles on the latest advances in marine biology Authored by leading figures in their respective fields of study Presents materials that are widely used by managers, students and academic professionals in the marine sciences