This paper reviews our knowledge of 011-pollution effects on coral-reef communities, concentrating on research done since the last review on this subject by Johannes (1975). The review focusses on crude-oil effects on scleractinian corals and octocorals and summarizes the small amount of work conducted on other reef organisms, as well as on the reef flora. Until 1975 there appeared to be no con...

Ocean acidification threatens the survival of coral reef ecosystems worldwide. The negative effects of ocean acidification observed in many laboratory experiments have been seen in studies of naturally low-pH reefs, with little evidence to date for adaptation. Recently, we reported initial data suggesting that low-pH coral communities of the Palau Rock Islands appear healthy despite the extreme...

Monitoring o f coral reef bleaching has hitherto been based on regional-scale, in situ data. Larger-scale trends, however, must be determined using satellite-based observations. Using both a radiative transfer simulation and an analysis o f multitemporal Landsat TM images, the ability o f satellite remote sensing to detect and monitor coral reef bleaching is examined. The radiative transfer sim...

Coral reef ecosystems thrive in tropical oligotrophic oceans because of the relationship between corals and endosymbiotic dinoflagellate algae called Symbiodinium. Symbiodinium convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into organic carbon and oxygen to fuel coral growth and calcification, creating habitat for these diverse and productive ecosystems. Light is thus a key regulating factor shaping the p...

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch (CRW) program has developed a daily global 5-km product suite based on satellite observations to monitor thermal stress on coral reefs. These products fulfill requests from coral reef managers and researchers for higher resolution products by taking advantage of new satellites, sensors and algorithms. Improvements ...

New technologies for culturing and settling scleractinian coral larvae in the field are required to elucidate the role of recruitment in population dynamics and to provide options for reef rehabilitation. Natural multi-species aggregations of coral embryos, which frequently form slicks on the sea surface after large-scale annual spawnings, were identified as a potential resource for mass coral ...

Coral bleaching is often characterized by high spatial variation across reef systems. Using a field survey and manipulative experiment, we tested whether the physical structure of coral reefs modifies environmental conditions that, in turn, influence spatial variation in bleaching in 3 scleractinian corals, Pocillopora verrucosa, Acropora elseyi, and Porites rus. Corals inhabit mainly the hard-...

The ecosystem goods and services provided by coral reefs are critical to the social and economic welfare of hundreds of millions of people, overwhelmingly in developing countries [1]. Widespread reef degradation is severely eroding these goods and services, but the socioeconomic factors shaping the ways that societies use coral reefs are poorly understood [2]. We examine relationships between h...

Interactions between Corals and their Symbiotic Algae Gisèle Muller-Parker and Christopher F. D'Elia The mutualistic relationship between corals and their algal endosymbionts is a key factor in the evolutionary success of hermatypic (reef building) corals. Corals that harbor endosymbiotic algae exhibit faster rates of calcification, photoautotrophy and many other attributes that are believed to...

BACKGROUND Coral reefs are hotspots of biodiversity, yet processes of diversification in these ecosystems are poorly understood. The environmental heterogeneity of coral reef environments could be an important contributor to diversification, however, evidence supporting ecological speciation in corals is sparse. Here, we present data from a widespread coral species that reveals a strong associa...