Abstract
Coral reefs are increasingly threatened by various types of disturbances, and their recovery is challenged by accelerating, human-induced environmental changes. Recurrent disturbances reduce the pool of mature adult colonies of reef-building corals and undermine post-disturbance recovery from newly settled recruits. Using a long-term interannual data set, we show that coral assemblages on the reef slope of Moorea, French Polynesia, have maintained a high capacity to recover despite a unique frequency of large-scale disturbances which, since the 1990s, have caused catastrophic declines in coral cover and abundance. In 2014, only four years after one of the most extreme cases of coral decline documented, abundance of juvenile and adult colonies had regained or exceeded pre-disturbance levels, and no phase-shift to macroalgal dominance was recorded. This rapid recovery has been achieved despite constantly low coral recruitment rates, suggesting a high post-disturbance survivorship of recruits. However, taxonomic differences in coral susceptibility to disturbances and contrasting recovery trajectories have resulted in changes in the relative composition of species. In the present context of global coral reef decline, our study establishes a new benchmark for the capacity of certain benthic reef communities to sustain and recover their coral cover from repeated, intense disturbances.
Highlights
Coral reefs are threatened by various types of local and large-scale anthropogenic and natural disturbances that cause widespread mortalities of scleractinian corals, the primary framework builders and key components of reef health and biodiversity[1,2,3]
Between 1991 and 2014, the reefs were impacted by two cyclones, five bleaching episodes, and a catastrophic crown-of-thorns seastar Acanthaster spp. (COTS) outbreak that caused two additional episodes of major coral decline (Fig. 2a)
The first major decline resulted from the combined impacts of a cyclone and a bleaching event that reduced live coral cover from ∼51% in 1991 to ∼22% in 1993
Summary
Mehdi Adjeroud[1,2], Mohsen Kayal 3, Claudie Iborra-Cantonnet[1], Julie Vercelloni[4,5], Pauline Bosserelle[6], Vetea Liao[3], Yannick Chancerelle[3], Joachim Claudet2,7 & Lucie Penin[2,8]. Using a long-term interannual data set, we show that coral assemblages on the reef slope of Moorea, French Polynesia, have maintained a high capacity to recover despite a unique frequency of large-scale disturbances which, since the 1990s, have caused catastrophic declines in coral cover and abundance. In 2014, only four years after one of the most extreme cases of coral decline documented, abundance of juvenile and adult colonies had regained or exceeded predisturbance levels, and no phase-shift to macroalgal dominance was recorded This rapid recovery has been achieved despite constantly low coral recruitment rates, suggesting a high post-disturbance survivorship of recruits. Moorea is a unique study site to examine the temporal dynamics and recovery trajectories of coral populations affected by acute and recurrent disturbances, and the data set analyzed here is one of the most comprehensive in the Indo-Pacific
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