Changes in Florida's Coral Reef Communitites
People all over the world know coral reefs for their incredible beauty and diversity. Tourists flock to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia to catch a glimpse of a natural wonder. Even among ecologists, many cite coral reefs as their favorite ecosystem.
Hopefully, if you are interested in coral reefs, you also know that they are in danger. The coastal environments that we enjoy today have a long history of exploitation and human intervention. Fortunately, increased modern protections for these crucial systems eliminated much of the direct harvesting by humans within coral reefs. Other human-caused changes to the environment, such as nutrient runoff, increased sedimentation, and global warming, threaten the integrity of coral reefs and reduce their viability.
Logically, if the ocean conditions become unfavorable for most coral species, "weedy" or stress-tolerant species will increase in abundance and ultimately edge out vulnerable individuals. As if there was a drought which killed your lawn and allowed it to fill with dandelions, some organisms are better equipped to deal with the warmer, algae-filled waters seen in recent years.
Just last year, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) noted that after thousands of years of consistency, the Florida Keys reefs began to erode (Toth et al. 2018)
Toth et al. (2019) compared modern coral reefs in the Florida Keys to ancient ones using reef cores, from which one can determine what species were present and in what proportions. As noted in this article, this method has some issues of sampling bias, where soft-bodied or branching corals are often not reflected in the core results.
Because coral reefs protect coastal regions from the effect of storms such as hurricanes, so shifts in their composition or overall health have heavy implications for communities. And reefs are changing, with Toth et al. finding a large decrease in coral cover in just a few decades. The disproportionate loss of reef-building species implicates that the structure humans rely so heavily on is increasingly threatened.
These essential ecosystems need protection if future generations will be able to enjoy the natural world. We must agree that conservation and restoration must be a priority; if not for the sake of biodiversity, for the safety of the humans relying on it for their safety.
Sources:
Toth, L. T., A. Stathakopoulos, I. B. Kuffner, R. R. Ruzicka, M. A. Colella, and E. A. Shinn. 2019. The unprecedented loss of Florida's reef-building corals and the emergence of a novel coral-reef assemblage. Ecology 100(9):e02781. 10.1002/ecy.2781
Toth, L. T., I. B. Kuffner, A. Stathakopoulos, E. A. Shinn. 2018. A 3,000-year lag between the geological and ecological shutdown of Florida's coral reefs. Global Change Biology 24(11), p. 5471-5483.
-Madeline Frey
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| Florida Keys Reef. Source: Surfrider Foundation |
Hopefully, if you are interested in coral reefs, you also know that they are in danger. The coastal environments that we enjoy today have a long history of exploitation and human intervention. Fortunately, increased modern protections for these crucial systems eliminated much of the direct harvesting by humans within coral reefs. Other human-caused changes to the environment, such as nutrient runoff, increased sedimentation, and global warming, threaten the integrity of coral reefs and reduce their viability.
Logically, if the ocean conditions become unfavorable for most coral species, "weedy" or stress-tolerant species will increase in abundance and ultimately edge out vulnerable individuals. As if there was a drought which killed your lawn and allowed it to fill with dandelions, some organisms are better equipped to deal with the warmer, algae-filled waters seen in recent years.
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| Researcher surveying coral reefs. Source: Florida Keys Treasures |
Toth et al. (2019) compared modern coral reefs in the Florida Keys to ancient ones using reef cores, from which one can determine what species were present and in what proportions. As noted in this article, this method has some issues of sampling bias, where soft-bodied or branching corals are often not reflected in the core results.
Because coral reefs protect coastal regions from the effect of storms such as hurricanes, so shifts in their composition or overall health have heavy implications for communities. And reefs are changing, with Toth et al. finding a large decrease in coral cover in just a few decades. The disproportionate loss of reef-building species implicates that the structure humans rely so heavily on is increasingly threatened.
These essential ecosystems need protection if future generations will be able to enjoy the natural world. We must agree that conservation and restoration must be a priority; if not for the sake of biodiversity, for the safety of the humans relying on it for their safety.
Sources:
Toth, L. T., A. Stathakopoulos, I. B. Kuffner, R. R. Ruzicka, M. A. Colella, and E. A. Shinn. 2019. The unprecedented loss of Florida's reef-building corals and the emergence of a novel coral-reef assemblage. Ecology 100(9):e02781. 10.1002/ecy.2781
Toth, L. T., I. B. Kuffner, A. Stathakopoulos, E. A. Shinn. 2018. A 3,000-year lag between the geological and ecological shutdown of Florida's coral reefs. Global Change Biology 24(11), p. 5471-5483.
-Madeline Frey
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