Turf algae-mediated coral damage in coastal reefs of Belize, Central America

Many coral reefs in the Caribbean experienced substantial changes in their benthic community composition during the last decades. This often resulted in phase shifts from scleractinian coral dominance to that by other benthic invertebrate or algae. However, knowledge about how the related role of co...

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Main Authors:	Wild, Christian, Jantzen, Carin, Kremb, Stephan Georg
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	PeerJ Inc. 2014
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4178456/

id	pubmed-4178456
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-41784562014-09-30 Turf algae-mediated coral damage in coastal reefs of Belize, Central America Wild, Christian Jantzen, Carin Kremb, Stephan Georg Marine Biology Many coral reefs in the Caribbean experienced substantial changes in their benthic community composition during the last decades. This often resulted in phase shifts from scleractinian coral dominance to that by other benthic invertebrate or algae. However, knowledge about how the related role of coral-algae contacts may negatively affect corals is scarce. Therefore, benthic community composition, abundance of algae grazers, and the abundance and character of coral-algae contacts were assessed in situ at 13 Belizean reef sites distributed along a distance gradient to the Belizean mainland (12–70 km): Mesoamerican Barrier Reef (inshore), Turneffe Atoll (inner and outer midshore), and Lighthouse Reef (offshore). In situ surveys revealed significantly higher benthic cover by scleractinian corals at the remote Lighthouse Reef (26–29%) when compared to the other sites (4–19%). The abundance of herbivorous fish and the sea urchin Diadema antillarum significantly increased towards the offshore reef sites, while the occurrence of direct coral-algae contacts consequently increased significantly with decreasing distance to shore. About 60% of these algae contacts were harmful (exhibiting coral tissue damage, pigmentation change, or overgrowth) for corals (mainly genera Orbicella and Agaricia), particularly when filamentous turf algae were involved. These findings provide support to the hypothesis that (turf) algae-mediated coral damage occurs in Belizean coastal, near-shore coral reefs. PeerJ Inc. 2014-09-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4178456/ /pubmed/25276504 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.571 Text en © 2014 Wild et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
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	Wild, Christian Jantzen, Carin Kremb, Stephan Georg
spellingShingle	Wild, Christian Jantzen, Carin Kremb, Stephan Georg Turf algae-mediated coral damage in coastal reefs of Belize, Central America
author_facet	Wild, Christian Jantzen, Carin Kremb, Stephan Georg
author_sort	Wild, Christian
title	Turf algae-mediated coral damage in coastal reefs of Belize, Central America
title_short	Turf algae-mediated coral damage in coastal reefs of Belize, Central America
title_full	Turf algae-mediated coral damage in coastal reefs of Belize, Central America
title_fullStr	Turf algae-mediated coral damage in coastal reefs of Belize, Central America
title_full_unstemmed	Turf algae-mediated coral damage in coastal reefs of Belize, Central America
title_sort	turf algae-mediated coral damage in coastal reefs of belize, central america
description	Many coral reefs in the Caribbean experienced substantial changes in their benthic community composition during the last decades. This often resulted in phase shifts from scleractinian coral dominance to that by other benthic invertebrate or algae. However, knowledge about how the related role of coral-algae contacts may negatively affect corals is scarce. Therefore, benthic community composition, abundance of algae grazers, and the abundance and character of coral-algae contacts were assessed in situ at 13 Belizean reef sites distributed along a distance gradient to the Belizean mainland (12–70 km): Mesoamerican Barrier Reef (inshore), Turneffe Atoll (inner and outer midshore), and Lighthouse Reef (offshore). In situ surveys revealed significantly higher benthic cover by scleractinian corals at the remote Lighthouse Reef (26–29%) when compared to the other sites (4–19%). The abundance of herbivorous fish and the sea urchin Diadema antillarum significantly increased towards the offshore reef sites, while the occurrence of direct coral-algae contacts consequently increased significantly with decreasing distance to shore. About 60% of these algae contacts were harmful (exhibiting coral tissue damage, pigmentation change, or overgrowth) for corals (mainly genera Orbicella and Agaricia), particularly when filamentous turf algae were involved. These findings provide support to the hypothesis that (turf) algae-mediated coral damage occurs in Belizean coastal, near-shore coral reefs.
publisher	PeerJ Inc.
publishDate	2014
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4178456/
_version_	1613138541792985088

Turf algae-mediated coral damage in coastal reefs of Belize, Central America

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