The NOAA IR serves as an archival repository of NOAA-published products including scientific findings, journal articles, guidelines, recommendations, or other information authored or co-authored by NOAA or funded partners.
As a repository, the NOAA IR retains documents in their original published format to ensure public access to scientific information.
i
Divergent bleaching and recovery trajectories in reef-building corals following a decade of successive marine heatwaves
-
2023
-
-
Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(52)
[PDF-6.55 MB]
Details:
-
Journal Title:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
-
Personal Author:
-
NOAA Program & Office:
-
Sea Grant Program:
-
Description:Increasingly frequent marine heatwaves are devastating coral reefs. Corals that survive these extreme events must rapidly recover if they are to withstand subsequent events, and long-term survival in the face of rising ocean temperatures may hinge on recovery capacity and acclimatory gains in heat tolerance over an individual’s lifespan. To better understand coral recovery trajectories in the face of successive marine heatwaves, we monitored the responses of bleaching-susceptible and bleaching-resistant individuals of two dominant coral species in Hawai’i, Montipora capitata and Porites compressa, over a decade that included three marine heatwaves. Bleaching-susceptible colonies of P. compressa exhibited beneficial acclimatization to heat stress (i.e., less bleaching) following repeat heatwaves, becoming indistinguishable from bleaching-resistant conspecifics during the third heatwave. In contrast, bleaching-susceptible M. capitata repeatedly bleached during all successive heatwaves and exhibited seasonal bleaching and substantial mortality for up to 3 y following the third heatwave. Encouragingly, bleaching-resistant individuals of both species remained pigmented across the entire time series; however, pigmentation did not necessarily indicate physiological resilience. Specifically, M. capitata displayed incremental yet only partial recovery of symbiont density and tissue biomass across both bleaching phenotypes up to 35 mo following the third heatwave as well as considerable partial mortality. Conversely, P. compressa appeared to recover across most physiological metrics within 2 y and experienced little to no mortality. Ultimately, these results indicate that even some visually robust, bleaching-resistant corals can carry the cost of recurring heatwaves over multiple years, leading to divergent recovery trajectories that may erode coral reef resilience in the Anthropocene.
-
Source:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(52)
-
DOI:
-
ISSN:0027-8424;1091-6490;
-
Format:
-
Publisher:
-
Document Type:
-
Funding:
-
License:
-
Rights Information:CC BY-NC-ND
-
Compliance:Submitted
-
Main Document Checksum:
-
Download URL:
-
File Type:
