Predicted increases in coral disease outbreaks associated with climate change have implications for coral reef ecosystems and the people and industries that depend on them. It is critical that coral reef managers understand these implications and have the ability to assess and reduce risk, detect and contain outbreaks, and monitor and minimise impacts. Here, we present a coral disease response ...

Little is known about coral diseases in the Indian Ocean region, especially in the Republic of Maldives. This study aimed at documenting the presence of coral diseases in the archipelago of the Maldives. Surveys for lesions in scleractinians conducted at 8 sites around Magoodhoo Island (Faafu Atoll) in October and November 2010 led to the identification of 5 coral diseases and 1 anomalous pigme...

Elevated water temperatures, a decrease in ocean pH, and an increasing prevalence of severe storms have lead to bleaching and death of the hard corals that underpin coral reef ecosystems. As coral cover declines, fish diversity and abundance declines. How degradation of coral reefs affects behavior of reef inhabitants is unknown. Here, we demonstrate that risk assessment behaviors of prey are s...

Coral bleaching and mortality is predicted to increase under global climate change. A new observation technique is required to monitor regional coral conditions. To this end, we developed a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system installed in a towable buoy for boat observations, which acquires continuous fluorescent images of the seabed during day-time. Most corals have innate fluorescent p...

Coral reefs are consistently and increasingly subject to acute disturbance events that often lead to a reduction in live coral cover with concomitant effects on the diversity and abundance of coral reef fishes. Here we examine changes in both hard coral and reef-fish assemblages over 15 yr following major losses of coral from exposed reefs in 2 widely separated sectors of the Great Barrier Reef...

Diet specificity is likely to be the key predictor of a predator's vulnerability to changing habitat and prey conditions. Understanding the degree to which predatory coral reef fishes adjust or maintain prey choice, in response to declines in coral cover and changes in prey availability, is critical for predicting how they may respond to reef habitat degradation. Here, we use stable isotope ana...

Thermally induced bleaching has caused a global decline in corals and the frequency of such bleaching events will increase. Thermal bleaching severely disrupts the trophic behaviour of the coral holobiont, reducing the photosynthetically derived energy available to the coral host. In the short term this reduction in energy transfer from endosymbiotic algae results in an energy deficit for the c...

BACKGROUND Coral reefs are facing increasing pressure from natural and anthropogenic stressors that have already caused significant worldwide declines. In January 2010, coral reefs of Florida, United States, were impacted by an extreme cold-water anomaly that exposed corals to temperatures well below their reported thresholds (16°C), causing rapid coral mortality unprecedented in spatial extent...

Figure 1. Crown-of-thorns starfish and their legacy. (A) A group of crown-of-thorns starfish converge on the remaining small piece of living coral tissue (lc) on the surface of a tabular coral (Acropora sp.) The other coral tissue has just been consumed by the starfish so that only the white skeleton remains (cs). (B) After crown-of-thorns starfish have removed the living coral tissue, the expo...

The coral reefs at the northernmost tip of Sabah, Borneo will be established under a marine protected area: the Tun Mustapha Park (TMP) by the end of 2015. This area is a passage where the Sulu Sea meets the South China Sea and it is situated at the border of the area of maximum marine biodiversity, the Coral Triangle. The TMP includes fringing and patch reefs established on a relatively shallo...