Bleaching in reef corals: Physiological and stable isotopic responses

Symbiont speciWcity and bleaching susceptibility among soft corals in the 1998 Great Barrier Reef mass coral bleaching event

Considerable variability in bleaching was observed within and among soft coral taxa in the order Alcyonacea (Octocorallia: Cnidaria) on the central Great Barrier Reef (GBR, latitude 18.2°–19.0°S, longitude 146.4°–147.3°E) during the 1998 mass coral bleaching event. In April 1998, during a period of high sea surface temperatures, tissue samples were taken from bleached and unbleached colonies re...

Coral reef bleaching and global climate change: can corals survive the next century?

C oral reef ecosystems are threatened on a worldwide basis, with overfishing, diseases, eutrophication, hurricanes, overpopulation, and global climate change all contributing to recent declines in reef-forming corals or phase shifts in community structure on time scales not observed previously (1–3). These changes are in contrast to recent periods of long-term stability in coral reef communitie...

Disease incidence is related to bleaching extent in reef-building corals.

Recent outbreaks of coral bleaching and disease have contributed to substantial declines in the abundance of reef-building coral. Significant attention has been paid to both phenomena in order to determine their effect on reef trajectories. Although each is positively correlated with high temperatures, few studies have explored the potential links between bleaching and disease. A longitudinal s...

Phosphomonoesterases in Reef-Building Corals.

Acclimatization in tropical reef corals

Global climate change (GCC) is the most widespread environmental peril facing tropical coral reefs, yet the capacity of scleractinian corals to survive the challenge is not well understood. Acclimatization is a primary mechanism by which organisms match their physiology in a timely and beneficial way to a rapidly changing environment, and so it is not surprising that the question ‘can corals ac...