Abstract
Tropical reefs often undergo acute disturbances that result in landscape-scale loss of coral. Due to increasing threats to coral reefs from climate change and anthropogenic perturbations, it is critical to understand mechanisms that drive recovery of these ecosystems. We explored this issue on the fore reef of Moorea, French Polynesia, following a crown-of-thorns seastar outbreak and cyclone that dramatically reduced cover of coral. During the five-years following the disturbances, the rate of re-establishment of coral cover differed systematically around the triangular-shaped island; coral cover returned most rapidly at sites where the least amount of live coral remained after the disturbances. Although sites differed greatly in the rate of return of coral, all showed at least some evidence of re-assembly to their pre-disturbance community structure in terms of relative abundance of coral taxa and other benthic space holders. The primary driver of spatial variation in recovery was recruitment of sexually-produced corals; subsequent growth and survivorship were less important in shaping the spatial pattern. Our findings suggest that, although the coral community has been resilient, some areas are unlikely to attain the coral cover and taxonomic structure they had prior to the most recent disturbances before the advent of another landscape-scale perturbation.
Highlights
The propensity for coral communities to recover from perturbations on Indo-Pacific reefs contrasts sharply with the Caribbean, where corals have generally failed to recover from disturbances since at least the early 1980’s, and there has been a widespread pattern of shifts from coral- to a macroalgae-dominated state in many locations[4,5,6]
Comparative studies of coral community dynamics in select locations identified several mechanisms that influenced the rate of coral recovery, with patterns of recovery driven by differences in the demographic rates of different coral taxa, including recruitment, post-settlement growth and survival, and the capacity for regrowth of remnant colonies[7,9,11]
Understanding the factors determining the similarity of pre- and post- disturbance communities is central to our understanding of community resilience, because coral reefs can recover to pre-disturbance levels of coral cover but shift in the assemblage structure of corals and associated biota[3,12,19]
Summary
The propensity for coral communities to recover from perturbations on Indo-Pacific reefs contrasts sharply with the Caribbean, where corals have generally failed to recover from disturbances since at least the early 1980’s, and there has been a widespread pattern of shifts from coral- to a macroalgae-dominated state in many locations[4,5,6]. Comparative studies of coral community dynamics in select locations identified several mechanisms that influenced the rate of coral recovery, with patterns of recovery driven by differences in the demographic rates of different coral taxa, including recruitment, post-settlement growth and survival, and the capacity for regrowth of remnant colonies[7,9,11] These kinds of studies are critical to understanding why coral reefs differ in their ability to recover from disturbances. The fore reef of Moorea, French Polynesia, has undergone repeated disturbances over the past several decades that have resulted in landscape-scale loss of coral followed by return to pre-disturbance cover within about a decade[12,20,21,22,23,24,25] These have included cyclones, coral bleaching events, and outbreaks of predatory crown-of-thorns sea stars. Is there variation in resilience of the fore reef coral community among the three shores of Moorea as measured by the spatial pattern of loss and return rate of live coral? Second, what demographic mechanisms underlie spatial variation in speed of recovery of coral cover? And third, is the benthic community – defined by cover of scleractinians, Millepora, and the abundance of other sessile benthic taxa – re-assembling to its pre-disturbance community structure?
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