ABSTRACT: Coral reefs prefer to reside in warm, clean, clear waters with high oxygen content. Any deterioration of their environment would affect the life of coral reefs. Therefore, coral reefs serve as an important indicator of the environmental condition. Kenting National Park enjoys the most abundant coral reefs around Taiwan. However, recent extreme weather events, such as Typhoon Morakot i...

Although benthic motile invertebrate communities encompass the vast majority of coral reef diversity, their response to habitat modification has been poorly studied. A variety of benthic species, particularly decapods, provide benefits to their coral host enabling them to cope with environmental stressors, and as a result benefit the overall diversity of coral-associated species. However, littl...

The coral-killing sponge, Terpios hoshinota is a global invasive species that has conquered coral patches within a short span of time, which has led to a significant decline in living coral cover at various geographical locations. In this study, we surveyed the linear progression and impact of the Terpios invasion on live coral patches along Palk Bay, Indian Ocean, from August 2013 to August 20...

Severe climatic disturbance events often have major impacts on coral reef communities, generating cycles of decline and recovery, and in some extreme cases, community-level phase shifts from coral-to algal-dominated states. Benthic habitat changes directly affect reef fish communities, with low coral cover usually associated with low fish diversity and abundance. No-take marine reserves (NTRs) ...

Hawkfishes (family: Cirrhitidae) are small conspicuous reef predators that commonly perch on, or shelter within, the branches of coral colonies. This study examined habitat associations of hawkfishes, and explicitly tested whether hawkfishes associate with specific types of live coral. Live coral use and habitat selectivity of hawkfishes was explored at six locations from Chagos in the central ...

Here, I shall present a brief review of ca.35 years of our studies on changes in the coral species diversity and community structure at Eilat, Red Sea, at several scales in space and time. In the following, I shall: (1) summarize the geographical setting and the geological, physical and biological characteristics of the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba, then point out the uniqueness of the coral reefs of Ei...

BACKGROUND Globally, coral bleaching has been responsible for a significant decline in both coral cover and diversity over the past two decades. During the summer of 2010-11, anomalous large-scale ocean warming induced unprecedented levels of coral bleaching accompanied by substantial storminess across more than 12° of latitude and 1200 kilometers of coastline in Western Australia (WA). METHO...

Coral reefs are increasingly threatened by global and local anthropogenic stressors such as rising seawater temperature, nutrient enrichment, sedimentation, and overfishing. Although many studies have investigated the impacts of local and global stressors on coral reefs, we still do not fully understand how these stressors influence coral community structure, particularly across environmental g...

To improve the regenerative performance of nano-hydroxyapatite/coralline (nHA/coral) block grafting in a canine mandibular critical-size defect model, nHA/coral blocks were coated with recombinant human vascular endothelial growth factor(165) (rhVEGF) via physical adsorption (3 μg rhVEGF165 per nHA/coral block). After the nHA/coral blocks and VEGF/nHA/coral blocks were randomly implanted into t...

Coral reefs and seagrass beds are often located adjacent to one another, but little is known about the degree to which their fish communities are interlinked. To determine whether coral reef fishes on the coral reef are interlinked with or segregated from fishes on adjacent seagrass beds, a 60 m coral reef–seagrass gradient was studied on the island of Zanzibar in the western Indian Ocean. Usin...