Coral recovery after a burial event: insights on coral resilience in a marginal reef
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Coral recovery after a burial event: insights on coral resilience in a marginal reef Guilherme O. Longo 1
&
Louize F. C. Correia 1 & Thayná J. Mello 1,2
Received: 20 July 2020 / Revised: 11 September 2020 / Accepted: 15 September 2020 # Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung 2020
Abstract Scleractinian reef-building corals can lose their endosymbiotic photosynthetic dinoflagelates (Symbiodiniaceae) and bleach in response to drastic changes in environmental conditions, such as extreme temperature fluctuations and burial events. As bleaching episodes are becoming more frequent and intense worldwide, post-bleaching recovery is critical for coral resilience. We report an in situ experiment in which a previously monitored colony of the coral Siderastrea stellata was found detached, overturned, buried, and bleached (95% of its surface). We reattached the coral to the reef and documented its recovery during 6 months by quantifying its surface area and health condition using 3D models derived from structure-from-motion photogametry of videos obtained in the field. The coral showed the first signs of recovery from a bright-white bleached state within 2 days and fully recovered to a healthy-like state in roughly 1 month, demonstrating that the endosymbiotic algal community recovered fast. Understanding the mechanisms of this fast recovery in marginal reefs in which post-bleaching mortality of dominant reef-building corals like S. stellata is relatively low (< 10%) may provide insights on how reef-building corals will cope with future climate change. Keywords Coral bleaching . 3D modeling . Siderastrea . Brazil . SW Atlantic
Introduction Scleractinian reef-building corals establish a symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic dinoflagelate algae (zooxanthellae) that live within their soft tissues, in exchange for providing photosynthetic products that are used by corals as an important energy source. The interruption of this symbiosis is known as coral bleaching (Hoegh-Guldberg 1999), in reference to the loss
Communicated by B. W. Hoeksema Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12526-020-01121-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Guilherme O. Longo [email protected] 1
Marine Ecology Laboratory, Department of Oceanography and Limnology, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Av. Via Costeira S/N, Natal, RN 59014-002, Brazil
2
Parque Nacional Marinho de Fernando de Noronha, Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade, Al. Boldró S/N, Fernando de Noronha, PE, Brazil
of zooxanthellae, making bleached corals more susceptible to diseases and mortality (Carpenter et al. 2008). The symbiosis between corals and algae can be ceased by multiple factors including extreme temperatures and high irradiance, major players in climate-driven bleaching episodes (Jokiel and Coles 1977; Hughes et al. 2018), but also by prolonged darkness (Douglas 2003; Erftemeijer et al. 2012), since symb
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