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The effect of sub-lethal increases in temperature on the growth and population trajectories of three scleractinian corals on the southern Great Barrier Reef

  • Population Ecology
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Abstract

To date, coral death has been the most conspicuous outcome of warming tropical seas, but as temperatures stabilize at higher values, the consequences for the corals remaining will be mediated by their demographic responses to the sub-lethal effects of temperature. To gain insight into the nature of these responses, here I develop a model to test the effect of increased temperature on populations of three pocilloporid corals at One Tree Island, near the southern extreme of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Using Seriatopora hystrix, S. caliendrum and Pocillopora damicornis as study species, the effects of temperature on growth were determined empirically, and the dynamics of their populations determined under natural temperatures over a 6-month period between 1999 and 2000 [defined as the study year (SY)]. The two data sets were combined in a demographic test of the possibility that the thermal regime projected for the southern GBR in the next 55–83 years—warmer by 3°C than the study year (the SY+3 regime), which is equivalent to 1.4°C warmer than the recent warm year of 1998—would alter coral population trajectories through the effects on coral growth alone; the analyses first were completed by species, then by family after pooling among species. Laboratory experiments showed that growth rates (i.e., calcification) varied significantly among species and temperatures, and displayed curvilinear thermal responses with growth maxima at ∼27.1°C. Based on these temperature-growth responses, the SY+3 regime is projected to: (1) increase annualized growth rates of all taxa by 24–39%, and defer the timing of peak growth from the summer to the autumn and spring, (2) alter the intrinsic rate of population growth (λ) for S. hystrix (λ decreases 26%) and S. caliendrum (λ increases 5%), but not for P. damicornis, and (3) have a minor effect on λ (a 0.3% increase) for the Pocilloporidae, largely because λ varies more among species than it does between temperatures. Ten-year population projections suggest that the effects of a sub-lethal increase in temperature (i.e., the SY+3 regime) are relatively small compared to the interspecific differences in population dynamics, but nevertheless will alter the population size and increase the relative abundance of large colonies at the expense of smaller colonies for all three species, as well as the Pocilloporidae. These effects may play an important role in determining the nuances of coral population structure as seawater warms, and their significance may intensity if the coral species pool is depleted of thermally sensitive species by bleaching.

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Acknowledgements

This study was carried out under a research permit from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (# G99/371) and was funded, in part, by the NSF-International Program (# INT-9910659), and the Graduate Research and International Program of California State University, Northridge (CSUN). The experiments described here comply with the current laws of the country in which they were performed. I would like to thank O. Hoegh-Guldberg for facilitating my visits to Australia, D.J. Barnes (Australian Institute of Marine Sciences) and G. Hendler (Los Angeles Museum of Natural History) for assisting with the CITES permits necessary to transport corals from Australia to the United States, and R.C. Carpenter, R.W. Buddemeier and an anonymous reviewer for comments that improved an earlier draft of this paper. The fieldwork was made possible with the assistance of R. Habeeb, J.A. Idjadi and E.D. Keach, and our visits to One Tree Island benefited greatly from the generosity and natural history knowledge of Pam and Konrad Beinsen. This is contribution number 124 of the CSUN marine biology program.

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  1. Department of Biology, California State University, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA, 91330-8303, USA

    Peter J. Edmunds

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Correspondence to Peter J. Edmunds.

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Communicated by Libby Marschall

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Edmunds, P.J. The effect of sub-lethal increases in temperature on the growth and population trajectories of three scleractinian corals on the southern Great Barrier Reef. Oecologia 146, 350–364 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-005-0210-5

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