Nutrient manipulation methods for coral reef studies: A critical review and experimental field data

The results reported in this paper demonstrate suboptimal experimental designs in some of the previously published manipulative methods and provide insights for the improvement of in-situ nutrient studies on coral reefs. Overgrown 0.5-liter porous clay-pot diffusers (“mini-reefs”—following a decade of recruitment, colonization and competition) were utilized to evaluate protocols for studies of controlled nutrient enrichment on coral reefs. A commonly used fertilizer, Tree Food Stakes resulted in detrimental 11-fold and 20-fold decreases of fleshy algae and calcareous coralline algae, respectively, relative to the Control treatments; while blue-green algae (Cyanobacteria) became significantly (6 times) more abundant. Osmocote-filled mini-reefs showed no such negative differences in mortality from the Controls for any functional group. By avoiding the pitfalls of inappropriate sources of enrichment, insufficient durations of colonization/competition studies, suboptimal study areas and inadequate nutrient detection limits in future research, the potential to provide new insights into the nutrient status of coral reefs is greatly increased.