Cumulative impacts: thermally bleached corals have reduced capacity to clear deposited sediment.

ABSTRACT: The interaction between local, anthropogenic stressors, and larger scale regional/global stressors, is often used to explain the current poor condition of many corals reefs. This form of cumulative pressure is clearly manifested by situations where dredging projects happen to coincide with marine heatwaves that have caused coral bleaching. A key pressure associated with dredging is elevated sedimentation. In this study, 3 coral species (Acropora millepora, Porites spp. and Turbinaria reniformis), representing three common morphologies (branching, massive and foliose respectively), were experimentally induced to bleach by exposure to a temperature of 31 °C for 21 d. The corals were then subjected to a range of sedimentation rates (0, 11, 22 and 40 mg cm^-2 d^-1), and the

SUBMITTER: Bessell-Browne P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5457406 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature