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Live coral cover in the fossil record: an example from Holocene reefs of the Dominican Republic

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An Erratum to this article was published on 25 January 2012

Abstract

Fossil reefs hold important ecological information that can provide a prehuman baseline for understanding recent anthropogenic changes in reefs systems. The most widely used proxy for reef “health,” however, is live coral cover, and this has not been quantified in the fossil record because it is difficult to establish that even adjacent corals were alive at the same time. This study uses microboring and taphonomic proxies to differentiate between live and dead corals along well-defined time surfaces in Holocene reefs of the Enriquillo Valley, Dominican Republic. At Cañada Honda, live coral cover ranged from 59 to 80% along a contemporaneous surface buried by a storm layer, and the reef, as a whole had 33–80% live cover within the branching, mixed, massive and platy zones. These values equal or exceed those in the Dominican Republic and Caribbean today or reported decades ago. The values from the western Dominican Republic provide a geologic baseline against which modern anthropogenic changes in Caribbean reefs can be considered.

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Acknowledgments

We thank T. Erickson, A. Estep, B. A. Hoedt, and A. Minhas for assistance in the field. Funding for the study came from Petroleum Research Fund Grant 42672-B8 and Otterbein University Faculty and Student Research grants. Electron microscopy was completed on the Oberlin College SEM purchased through NSF-CCLI grant No. 0087895.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology and Earth Science, Otterbein University, Westerville, OH, USA

    H. Lescinsky & B. Titus

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, 101 Rouse Life Sciences Bldg., Auburn, AL, USA

    B. Titus

  3. Department of Geology, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA

    D. Hubbard

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  1. H. Lescinsky
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  2. B. Titus
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  3. D. Hubbard
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Correspondence to H. Lescinsky.

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Communicated by Geology Editor Prof. Bernhard Riegl

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Lescinsky, H., Titus, B. & Hubbard, D. Live coral cover in the fossil record: an example from Holocene reefs of the Dominican Republic. Coral Reefs 31, 335–346 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-011-0863-y

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