Abstract
Caribbean coral reefs are declining due to a mosaic of local and global stresses, including climate change-induced thermal stress. Species and assemblage responses differ due to factors that are not easily identifiable or quantifiable. We calculated a novel species-specific metric of coral bleaching response, taxon-α and -β, which relates the response of a species to that of its assemblages for 16 species over 18 assemblages. By contextualizing species responses within the response of their assemblages, the effects of environmental factors are removed and intrinsic differences among taxa are revealed. Most corals experience either a saturation response, overly sensitive to weak stress (α > 0) but under-responsive compared to assemblage bleaching (β < 1), or a threshold response, insensitive to weak stress (α < 0) but over-responsive compared to assemblage bleaching (β > 1). This metric may help reveal key factors of bleaching susceptibility and identify species as targets for conservation.
References
Ban SS, Graham NAJ, Connolly SR (2014) Evidence for multiple stressor interactions and effects on coral reefs. Glob Change Biol 20:681–697
Barshis DJ, Ladner JT, Oliver TA, Seneca FO, Traylor-Knowles N, Palumbi SR (2013) Genomic basis for coral resilience to climate change. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110:1387–1392
Fitt WK, Mcfarland FK, Warner ME, Chilcoat GC (2000) Seasonal patterns of tissue biomass and densities of symbiotic dinoflagellates in reef corals and relation to coral bleaching. Limnol Oceanogr 45:677–685
Guest JR, Baird AH, Maynard JA, Muttaqin E, Edwards AJ, Campbell SJ, Yewdall K, Affendi YA, Chou LM (2012) Contrasting patterns of coral bleaching susceptibility in 2010 suggest an adaptive response to thermal stress. PLoS One 7:e33353
Howells EJ, Berkelmans R, van Oppen MJH, Willis BL, Bay LK (2013) Historical thermal regimes define limits to coral acclimatization. Ecology 94:1078–1088
Marcelino LA, Westneat MW, Stoyneva V, Henss J, Rogers JD, Radosevich A, Turzhitsky V, Siple M, Fang A, Swain TD, Fung J, Backman V (2013) Modulation of light-enhancement to symbiotic algae by light-scattering in corals and evolutionary trends in bleaching. PLoS One 8:e61492
Maynard JA, McKagan S, Raymundo L, Johnson S, Ahmadia GN, Johnston L, Houk P, Williams GJ, Kendall M, Heron SF, van Hooidonk R, McLeod E, Tracey D, Planes S (2015) Assessing relative resilience potential of coral reefs to inform management. Biol Conserv 192:109–119
McClanahan TR, Maina J, Ateweberhan M (2015) Regional coral responses to climate disturbances and warming is predicted by multivariate stress model and not temperature threshold metrics. Clim Change 131:607–620
McClanahan TR, Maina J, Moothien-Pillay R, Baker AC (2005) Effects of geography, taxa, water flow, and temperature variation on coral bleaching intensity in Mauritius. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 298:131–142
Muscatine L (1990) The role of symbiotic algae in carbon and energy flux in reef corals. In: Dubinsky Z (ed) Coral reefs. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp 75–87
Pratchett MS, McCowan D, Maynard JA, Heron SF (2013) Changes in bleaching susceptibility among corals subject to ocean warming and recurrent bleaching in Moorea, French Polynesia. PLoS One 8:e70443
Swain TD, Vega-Perkins JB, Oestreich WK, Triebold C, DuBois E, Henss J, Baird A, Siple M, Backman V, Marcelino L (2016a) Coral bleaching response index: a new tool to standardize and compare susceptibility to thermal bleaching. Glob Change Biol 22:2475–2488
Swain TD, DuBois E, Gomes A, Stoyneva VP, Radosevich AJ, Henss J, Wagner ME, Derbas J, Grooms HW, Velazquez EM, Traub J, Kennedy BJ, Grigorescu AA, Westneat MW, Sanborn K, Levine S, Schick M, Parsons G, Biggs BC, Rogers JD, Backman V, Marcelino LA (2016b) Skeletal light-scattering accelerates bleaching response in reef-building corals. BMC Ecol 16:10
van Oppen MJH, Oliver JK, Putnam HM, Gates RD (2015) Building coral reef resilience through assisted evolution. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112:2307–2313
Wilkinson C (2008) Status of the coral reefs of the world: 2008. Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network and Reef and Rainforest Research Centre, Townsville
Wooldridge SA (2014) Differential thermal bleaching susceptibilities amongst coral taxa: re-posing the role of the host. Coral Reefs 33:15–27
Yee SH, Santavy DL, Barron MG (2008) Comparing environmental influences on coral bleaching across and within species using clustered binomial regression. Ecol Modell 218:162–174
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by National Science Foundation (EFRI-1240416, EFRI-0937987 and CBET-1249311) and National Institutes of Health (CA-128641, EB-003682).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Communicated by Biology Editor Dr. Mark R. Patterson
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Swain, T.D., DuBois, E., Goldberg, S.J. et al. Bleaching response of coral species in the context of assemblage response. Coral Reefs 36, 395–400 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-017-1550-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-017-1550-4