Spatial Variation in Background Mortality among Dominant Coral Taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef

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 abilit...

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Main Authors:	Pisapia, Chiara, Pratchett, Morgan S.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2014
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4069195/

id	pubmed-4069195
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-40691952014-06-27 Spatial Variation in Background Mortality among Dominant Coral Taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef Pisapia, Chiara Pratchett, Morgan S. Research Article 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 km2 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. Public Library of Science 2014-06-24 /pmc/articles/PMC4069195/ /pubmed/24959921 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0100969 Text en © 2014 Pisapia, Pratchett http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 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 properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Pisapia, Chiara Pratchett, Morgan S.
spellingShingle	Pisapia, Chiara Pratchett, Morgan S. Spatial Variation in Background Mortality among Dominant Coral Taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef
author_facet	Pisapia, Chiara Pratchett, Morgan S.
author_sort	Pisapia, Chiara
title	Spatial Variation in Background Mortality among Dominant Coral Taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef
title_short	Spatial Variation in Background Mortality among Dominant Coral Taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef
title_full	Spatial Variation in Background Mortality among Dominant Coral Taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef
title_fullStr	Spatial Variation in Background Mortality among Dominant Coral Taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef
title_full_unstemmed	Spatial Variation in Background Mortality among Dominant Coral Taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef
title_sort	spatial variation in background mortality among dominant coral taxa on australia's great barrier reef
description	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 km2 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.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2014
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4069195/
_version_	1612105568135151616

Spatial Variation in Background Mortality among Dominant Coral Taxa on Australia's Great Barrier Reef

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