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      Fish predation hinders the success of coral restoration efforts using fragmented massive corals

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          Abstract

          As coral reefs continue to decline globally, coral restoration practitioners have explored various approaches to return coral cover and diversity to decimated reefs. While branching coral species have long been the focus of restoration efforts, the recent development of the microfragmentation coral propagation technique has made it possible to incorporate massive coral species into restoration efforts. Microfragmentation (i.e., the process of cutting large donor colonies into small fragments that grow fast) has yielded promising early results. Still, best practices for outplanting fragmented corals of massive morphologies are continuing to be developed and modified to maximize survivorship. Here, we compared outplant success among four species of massive corals ( Orbicella faveolata, Montastraea cavernosa, Pseudodiploria clivosa, and P. strigosa) in Southeast Florida, US. Within the first week following coral deployment, predation impacts by fish on the small (<5 cm 2) outplanted colonies resulted in both the complete removal of colonies and significant tissue damage, as evidenced by bite marks. In our study, 8–27% of fragments from four species were removed by fish within one week, with removal rates slowing down over time. Of the corals that remained after one week, over 9% showed signs of fish predation. Our findings showed that predation by corallivorous fish taxa like butterflyfishes (Chaetodontidae), parrotfishes (Scaridae), and damselfishes (Pomacentridae) is a major threat to coral outplants, and that susceptibility varied significantly among coral species and outplanting method. Moreover, we identify factors that reduce predation impacts such as: (1) using cement instead of glue to attach corals, (2) elevating fragments off the substrate, and (3) limiting the amount of skeleton exposed at the time of outplanting. These strategies are essential to maximizing the efficiency of outplanting techniques and enhancing the impact of reef restoration.

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          Warming Trends and Bleaching Stress of the World’s Coral Reefs 1985–2012

          Coral reefs across the world’s oceans are in the midst of the longest bleaching event on record (from 2014 to at least 2016). As many of the world’s reefs are remote, there is limited information on how past thermal conditions have influenced reef composition and current stress responses. Using satellite temperature data for 1985–2012, the analysis we present is the first to quantify, for global reef locations, spatial variations in warming trends, thermal stress events and temperature variability at reef-scale (~4 km). Among over 60,000 reef pixels globally, 97% show positive SST trends during the study period with 60% warming significantly. Annual trends exceeded summertime trends at most locations. This indicates that the period of summer-like temperatures has become longer through the record, with a corresponding shortening of the ‘winter’ reprieve from warm temperatures. The frequency of bleaching-level thermal stress increased three-fold between 1985–91 and 2006–12 – a trend climate model projections suggest will continue. The thermal history data products developed enable needed studies relating thermal history to bleaching resistance and community composition. Such analyses can help identify reefs more resilient to thermal stress.
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            Unprecedented Disease-Related Coral Mortality in Southeastern Florida

            Anomalously high water temperatures, associated with climate change, are increasing the global prevalence of coral bleaching, coral diseases, and coral-mortality events. Coral bleaching and disease outbreaks are often inter-related phenomena, since many coral diseases are a consequence of opportunistic pathogens that further compromise thermally stressed colonies. Yet, most coral diseases have low prevalence (<5%), and are not considered contagious. By contrast, we document the impact of an extremely high-prevalence outbreak (61%) of white-plague disease at 14 sites off southeastern Florida. White-plague disease was observed near Virginia Key, Florida, in September 2014, and after 12 months had spread 100 km north and 30 km south. The disease outbreak directly followed a high temperature coral-bleaching event and affected at least 13 coral species. Eusmilia fastigiata, Meandrina meandrites, and Dichocoenia stokesi were the most heavily impacted coral species, and were reduced to <3% of their initial population densities. A number of other coral species, including Colpophyllia natans, Pseudodiploria strigosa, Diploria labyrinthiformis, and Orbicella annularis were reduced to <25% of their initial densities. The high prevalence of disease, the number of susceptible species, and the high mortality of corals affected suggests this disease outbreak is arguably one of the most lethal ever recorded on a contemporary coral reef.
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              Demographic dynamics of the smallest marine vertebrates fuel coral-reef ecosystem functioning

              How coral reefs survive as oases of life in low-productivity oceans has puzzled scientists for centuries. The answer may lie in internal nutrient cycling and/or input from the pelagic zone. Integrating meta-analysis, field data, and population modelling, we show that the ocean’s smallest vertebrates, cryptobenthic reef fishes, promote internal reef-fish biomass production through exceptional larval supply from the pelagic environment. Specifically, cryptobenthics account for two-thirds of reef-fish larvae in the near-reef pelagic zone, despite limited adult reproductive outputs. This overwhelming abundance of cryptobenthic larvae fuels reef trophodynamics via rapid growth and extreme mortality, producing almost 60% of consumed reef fish biomass. While cryptobenthics are commonly overlooked, their unique demographic dynamics may make them a cornerstone of ecosystem functioning on modern coral reefs.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                PeerJ
                PeerJ
                peerj
                peerj
                PeerJ
                PeerJ Inc. (San Diego, USA )
                2167-8359
                2 October 2020
                2020
                : 8
                : e9978
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami , Miami, FL, United States of America
                [2 ]Department of Earth and Environment, Florida International University , Miami, FL, United States of America
                Article
                9978
                10.7717/peerj.9978
                7534677
                33062430
                55a620ca-3465-4320-bcd3-57f478b2ced4
                ©2020 Koval et al.

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.

                History
                : 22 April 2020
                : 26 August 2020
                Funding
                Funded by: NOAA’s Restoration Center
                Award ID: award OAA-NMFS-HCPO-2016-2004840
                This project was funded by NOAA’s Restoration Center (award OAA-NMFS-HCPO-2016-2004840). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Conservation Biology
                Ecology
                Marine Biology
                Zoology

                coral restoration,microfragmentation,fish predation,massive corals,orbicella faveolata,montastraea cavernosa,pseudodiploria clivosa,pseudodiploria strigosa

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