Coral reefs in the Anthropocene

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Coral reefs support immense biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services to many millions of people. Yet reefs are degrading rapidly in response to numerous anthropogenic drivers. In the coming centuries, reefs will run the gauntlet of climate change, and rising temperatures will transform them into

Related collections

Most cited references 58

Record: found
Abstract: not found
Article: not found

Quantifying uncertainties in global and regional temperature change using an ensemble of observational estimates: The HadCRUT4 data set

Colin Morice, John Kennedy, Nick Rayner … (2012)

0 comments Cited 621 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Rising to the challenge of sustaining coral reef resilience.

Terry P Hughes, Nicholas A J Graham, Jeremy B C Jackson … (2010)

Phase-shifts from one persistent assemblage of species to another have become increasingly commonplace on coral reefs and in many other ecosystems due to escalating human impacts. Coral reef science, monitoring and global assessments have focused mainly on producing detailed descriptions of reef decline, and continue to pay insufficient attention to the underlying processes causing degradation. A more productive way forward is to harness new theoretical insights and empirical information on why some reefs degrade and others do not. Learning how to avoid undesirable phase-shifts, and how to reverse them when they occur, requires an urgent reform of scientific approaches, policies, governance structures and coral reef management. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

0 comments Cited 384 times – based on 0 reviews      Review now

Bookmark

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Mechanisms of reef coral resistance to future climate change.

Stephen Palumbi, Daniel J Barshis, Nikki Traylor-Knowles … (2014)

Reef corals are highly sensitive to heat, yet populations resistant to climate change have recently been identified. To determine the mechanisms of temperature tolerance, we reciprocally transplanted corals between reef sites experiencing distinct temperature regimes and tested subsequent physiological and gene expression profiles. Local acclimatization and fixed effects, such as adaptation, contributed about equally to heat tolerance and are reflected in patterns of gene expression. In less than 2 years, acclimatization achieves the same heat tolerance that we would expect from strong natural selection over many generations for these long-lived organisms. Our results show both short-term acclimatory and longer-term adaptive acquisition of climate resistance. Adding these adaptive abilities to ecosystem models is likely to slow predictions of demise for coral reef ecosystems.