Comparison of Caribbean Coral Reef Communities Before and After Plio-Pleistocene Faunal Turnover: Analyses of Two Dominican Republic Reef Sequences

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Abstract The extent to which origination and selective extinction influenced the structure and dynamics of Caribbean coral reef communities is evaluated by comparing the diversity and distributional patterns of coral species in two Dominican Republic reef sequences prior to and following late Cenozoic Caribbean faunal turnover. The two sequences consist of the late Miocene Arroyo Bellaco reef of the Cibao Valley, northern Dominican Republic, and the late Pleistocene 125-ka reef terrace of the southern Dominican Republic. Samples were collected along 20-meter transects (10 Miocene, 10 Pleistocene); species identifications were made using standard sets of characters and morphometrics. In particular, species of Montastraea annularis-like corals were distinguished within each sequence using a 2-dimensional landmark technique involving average linkage cluster analysis, discriminant analyses, and non-parametric tests. Four Miocene and four Pleistocene species were recognized. Subsequent community analysis was t...