Date of this Version
6-7-2016
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Losses of corals worldwide emphasize the need to understand what drives reef decline. Stressors such as overfishing and nutrient pollution may reduce resilience of coral reefs by increasing coral?algal competition and reducing coral recruitment, growth and survivorship. Such effects may themselves develop via several mechanisms, including disruption of coral microbiomes. Here we report the results of a 3-year field experiment simulating overfishing and nutrient pollution. These stressors increase turf and macroalgal cover, destabilizing microbiomes, elevating putative pathogen loads, increasing disease more than twofold and increasing mortality up to eightfold. Above-average temperatures exacerbate these effects, further disrupting microbiomes of unhealthy corals and concentrating 80% of mortality in the warmest seasons. Surprisingly, nutrients also increase bacterial opportunism and mortality in corals bitten by parrotfish, turning normal trophic interactions deadly for corals. Thus, overfishing and nutrient pollution impact reefs down to microbial scales, killing corals by sensitizing them to predation, above-average temperatures and bacterial opportunism.
Originally Published In
Nature Communications
PMID
27270557
DOI
10.1038/ncomms11833
Recommended Citation
Zaneveld, Jesse R.; Burkepile, Deron E.; Shantz, Andrew A.; Pritchard, Catharine E.; McMinds, Ryan; Payet, Jerome P.; Welsh, Rory; Correa, Adrienne M. S.; Lemoine, Nathan P.; Rosales, Stephanie; Fuchs, Corinne; Maynard, Jeffrey A.; and Thurber, Rebecca Vega, "Overfishing and nutrient pollution interact with temperature to disrupt coral reefs down to microbial scales" (2016). All Faculty. 132.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/all_faculty/132
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