Chapter 5 - Limited Functional Redundancy and Lack of Resilience in Coral Reefs to Human Stressors

Abstract

Coral reefs worldwide are failing to cope with the challenges of increasing human pressures and are thus facing shifts from coral dominance to less desirable and less productive states. The incredible diversity of species in coral reefs will intuitively suggest that they will have a great functional redundancy and thus it will be easy for them to cope with human disturbances. But they do not. I suggest that the incredible diversity of species in coral reefs has actually led to a great degree of specialization, making almost every species unique and thus the entire ecosystem vulnerable to the loss of a few species. Coral reefs do not conform to the expectation that their great diversity will confer them with great resilience. Clearly, the capacity of this ecosystem to withstand human assaults can no longer be assumed and thus considerable management interventions are needed to afford this ecosystem some slack.