Prehistorical and historical declines in Caribbean coral reef accretion rates driven by loss of parrotfish

Katie L. Cramer (), Aaron O’Dea, Tara R. Clark, Jian-xin Zhao and Richard D. Norris
Additional contact information
Katie L. Cramer: Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
Aaron O’Dea: Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Tara R. Clark: Radiogenic Isotope Facility, School of Earth Sciences, The University of Queensland
Jian-xin Zhao: Radiogenic Isotope Facility, School of Earth Sciences, The University of Queensland
Richard D. Norris: Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Caribbean coral reefs have transformed into algal-dominated habitats over recent decades, but the mechanisms of change are unresolved due to a lack of quantitative ecological data before large-scale human impacts. To understand the role of reduced herbivory in recent coral declines, we produce a high-resolution 3,000 year record of reef accretion rate and herbivore (parrotfish and urchin) abundance from the analysis of sediments and fish, coral and urchin subfossils within cores from Caribbean Panama. At each site, declines in accretion rates and parrotfish abundance were initiated in the prehistorical or historical period. Statistical tests of direct cause and effect relationships using convergent cross mapping reveal that accretion rates are driven by parrotfish abundance (but not vice versa) but are not affected by total urchin abundance. These results confirm the critical role of parrotfish in maintaining coral-dominated reef habitat and the urgent need for restoration of parrotfish populations to enable reef persistence.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14160 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms14160

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14160

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().