Population collapse of habitat-forming species in the Mediterranean: a long-term study of gorgonian populations affected by recurrent marine heatwaves.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the resilience of temperate reefs to climate change requires exploring the recovery capacity of their habitat-forming species from recurrent marine heatwaves (MHWs). Here, we show that, in a Mediterranean highly enforced marine protected area established more than 40 years ago, habitat-forming octocoral populations that were first affected by a severe MHW in 2003 have not recovered after 15 years. Contrarily, they have followed collapse trajectories that have brought them to the brink of local ecological extinction. Since 2003, impacted populations of the red gorgonian Paramuricea clavata (Risso, 1826) and the red coral Corallium rubrum (Linnaeus, 1758) have followed different trends in terms of size structure, but a similar progressive reduction in density and

SUBMITTER: Gomez-Gras D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8692971 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature