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      Widespread loss of Caribbean acroporid corals was underway before coral bleaching and disease outbreaks

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          Abstract

          Endangered staghorn and elkhorn corals began disappearing from Caribbean reefs decades before climate change impacts.

          Abstract

          The mass mortality of acroporid corals has transformed Caribbean reefs from coral- to macroalgal-dominated habitats since systematic monitoring began in the 1970s. Declines have been attributed to overfishing, pollution, sea urchin and coral disease, and climate change, but the mechanisms are unresolved due to the dearth of pre-1970s data. We used paleoecological, historical, and survey data to track Acropora presence and dominance throughout the Caribbean from the prehuman period to present. Declines in dominance from prehuman values first occurred in the 1950s for Acropora palmata and the 1960s for Acropora cervicornis, decades before outbreaks of acroporid disease or bleaching. We compared trends in Acropora dominance since 1950 to potential regional and local drivers. Human population negatively affected and consumption of fertilizer for agriculture positively affected A. palmata dominance, the latter likely due to lower human presence in agricultural areas. The earlier, local roots of Caribbean Acropora declines highlight the urgency of mitigating local human impacts.

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          Most cited references48

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          Coral bleaching: causes and consequences

          B Brown (1997)
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            Coral reef bleaching: ecological perspectives

            P Glynn (1993)
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              Reproduction by Fragmentation in Corals

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Sci Adv
                Sci Adv
                SciAdv
                advances
                Science Advances
                American Association for the Advancement of Science
                2375-2548
                April 2020
                22 April 2020
                : 6
                : 17
                : eaax9395
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA.
                [2 ]Center for Oceans, Conservation International, Honolulu, HI 96816, USA.
                [3 ]Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
                [4 ]Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY 10024, USA.
                [5 ]Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado Postal 0843-03092, Panamá, República de Panamá.
                [6 ]Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013-7012, USA.
                [7 ]Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Kāne’ohe, HI 96744, USA.
                [8 ]Marine Science Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
                [9 ]School of Social and Natural Sciences, Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI 02809, USA.
                [10 ]MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Bremen 28359, Germany.
                [11 ]Department of Biology and Health Science, New England College, Henniker, NH 03242, USA.
                [12 ]Centre for Marine Science and School of Biological Sciences, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding author. Email: katie.cramer@ 123456gmail.com
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8760-180X
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6080-2254
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6855-0197
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0955-3061
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4718-8587
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2768-5615
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3047-6694
                Article
                aax9395
                10.1126/sciadv.aax9395
                7176417
                32426458
                4d0038ea-b9fb-4677-a1b6-d08fd263fa50
                Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 08 May 2019
                : 09 January 2020
                Funding
                Funded by: Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network;
                Categories
                Research Article
                Research Articles
                SciAdv r-articles
                Ecology
                Oceanography
                Oceanography
                Custom metadata
                Kyle Solis

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