by reefres | Apr 16, 2015
This paper explores herbivory and how it affects the resilience of coral reefs in the Caribbean. The authors identify important knowledge gaps that limit our ability to predict when herbivores are most likely to support resilience. The authors explore: What processes...
by reefres | Apr 15, 2015
Fishing is the primary source of reduced reef function globally. Marine reserves are a critical tool to help fish populations recover, however, there are no benchmarks to determine if the protection is effective, or whether a reserve has recovered enough to be fished...
by reefres | Mar 17, 2015
This study describes the increasing use of community based management of marine resources in the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) and assesses locally managed marine areas (LMMAs), producing the first regional inventory. LMMAs are managed for sustainable use and utilize a...
by reefres | Mar 17, 2015
This study provides the first empirical evidence linking turbidity and sedimentation with elevated levels of coral disease and other indicators of compromised health in situ. The study was conducted in Australia’s Montebello and Barrow Islands, encompassing marine...
by reefres | Feb 20, 2015
This study looked at the evolutionary importance of coral immune traits, which are related to phylogeny in other organisms. 140 different fragments from healthy coral colonies were sampled, representing 14 of the most common Caribbean hard corals (20% of regional hard...
by reefres | Feb 20, 2015
This study is a descriptive analysis of coral reef communities in North Male, Maldives seven years after the major 1998 coral bleaching event with the goal of evaluating ongoing changes and ability for adaptation. The study looked at coral community composition,...
by reefres | Jan 28, 2015
Marine reserves are an effective tool for conservation and fisheries management in tropical marine ecosystems. They provide benefits to surrounding areas through the export of eggs, larvae, juveniles and adults to other reserves and fished areas. To increase...
by reefres | Jan 28, 2015
Spatial assessments of coral reef communities across five reefs of the central Great Barrier Reef were conducted. Reef condition proxies included coral cover, coral composition, coral recruit density, reef structural complexity and fish assemblages. Each reef was...
by reefres | Jan 22, 2015
This study looks at whether MPAs in a given network have synergistic benefits on ecological, economic, and social management levels. A proposed analytical framework assessed whether ecological effects across entire an MPA network are greater than the sum of the...
by reefres | Jan 22, 2015
A natural experiment used data collected over 20 years from reefs spread over 115,000 km2 of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) to test how the loss of live coral versus loss of habitat complexity influenced reef fish community structure, reef fish diversity and fish...
by reefres | Jan 22, 2015
This study looked at long-term data from fossil and modern coral reefs to test for variation among coral genera over time, both in rates and directions of change in abundance. Data was synthesized from seven extant reefs, creating 78 trajectories of changing coral...
by reefres | Dec 12, 2014
The expansion of existing and emerging ocean uses has negative effects on ecosystems that provide habitat for key species and benefits to people. Integrated coastal and ocean management needs straightforward approaches for understanding the effects people have on...
by reefres | Oct 23, 2014
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are commonly implemented in the Caribbean to address the rapid decline in the quality of coral reefs and in the abundance and body size of associated fish populations. However, MPAs are typically designed without sufficient knowledge of...
by reefres | Oct 22, 2014
The authors describe six case studies of marine protected area (MPA) networks in the Coral Triangle region that differ in scale and the approach taken to establish the networks. These are: Nusa Penida in Indonesia Tun Mustapha Park in Malaysia Kimbe Bay in Papua New...
by reefres | Oct 20, 2014
Guest et al. (2012) examine the bleaching and mortality responses of corals at sites in Southeast Asia with different thermal histories during a large-scale bleaching event in 2010 to explore whether corals have the capacity to adapt to elevated sea temperatures. They...
by reefres | Oct 20, 2014
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are established for a variety of reasons including: protecting marine biodiversity and habitats from degradation, replenishing depleted fish populations, regulating tourism and recreation, accommodating conflicting resource uses, and...
