Bioerosion of reef-building crustose coralline algae by endolithic invertebrates in an upwelling-influenced reef

Coral Reefs - Coral reef growth is primarily determined by constructive and bioerosive processes acting on key reef-building organisms. Among them, corals are major contributors to the construction...     

The reef building coral Stylophora pistillata uses stored carbohydrates to maintain ATP levels under thermal stress

Coral Reefs - Coral reefs are on the brink of collapse from global warming and associated coral bleaching. Coral bleaching is the loss of algal symbionts from the coral tissue. The reduction in...     

Cryptofaunal diversity in fringing reef rhodoliths

Coral Reefs - Rhodolith distribution, morphology, and cryptofauna have been minimally studied on fringing reefs. We present the first study to examine both rhodolith distribution and associated...     

Genomic insights into hybridization of reef corals

Coral Reefs - Hybridization plays a fundamental role in speciation and diversification of plants and animals. Hybridization among highly diverse assemblages of reef corals is well known and widely...     

Exposure to degraded coral habitat depresses oxygen uptake rate during exercise of a juvenile reef fish

Coral Reefs - Coral reef ecosystems are currently under unprecedented stress due to anthropogenic induced climate change. Such stress causes coral habitats to degrade, which has been found to...     

Seasonal calcification of the coral Acropora digitifera from a subtropical marginal Okinawa reef under ocean acidification

Coral Reefs - Coral calcification is affected by the decrease in aragonite saturation state (Ωarag) caused by ocean acidification (OA). However, OA effects are modulated by other environmental...     

Functional diversity of reef molluscs along a tropical-to-temperate gradient

Coral Reefs - Global warming is leading to range shifts of marine species, threatening the structure and functioning of ecological communities and human populations that rely on them. The largest...     

Long-term variation in light intensity on a coral reef

Coral Reefs - An important goal of coral reef science is to understand the roles played by environmental conditions in determining benthic community structure. Pursuit of this goal typically...     

High diversity,abundance and distinct fish assemblages on submerged coral reef pinnacles compared to shallow emergent reefs

Coral Reefs - Coral reefs exhibit consistent patterns in biodiversity across multiple spatial scales, from local to global clines in species richness, abundance and community structure. Knowledge...     

Dietary and habitat niche partitioning in congeneric cryptobenthic reef fish species

Coral Reefs - Ecological niches hold critical information concerning the eco-evolutionary dynamics that govern biodiversity and abundance patterns. Cryptobenthic reef fishes account for...     

Incongruence between life-history traits and conservation status in reef corals

Coral Reefs - Comparative lists of species’ extinction risk are increasingly being used to prioritise conservation resources. Extinction risk is most rigorously assessed using quantitative...     

Endemic species dominate reef fish interaction networks on two isolated oceanic islands

Coral Reefs - Ecological interactions are found across ecosystems, facilitating comparison among systems with distinct species composition. The balance of positive and agonistic interactions among...     

Environmental controls on holocene reef development along the eastern brazilian margin

Coral Reefs - Drilling of the eastern Brazilian continental shelf in the 1980’s identified several main factors controlling Holocene reef growth in the South Atlantic. However, this model is...     

High herbivory despite high sediment loads on a fringing coral reef

Coral Reefs - Algal turfs are expected to increasingly dominate the benthos of coral reefs in the Anthropocene, becoming important sources of reef productivity. The sediments trapped within algal...     

Environmental DNA biomonitoring reveals seasonal patterns in coral reef fish community structure

Environmental Biology of Fishes - Coral reef fish populations are declining due to multiple factors including habitat destruction, overfishing, and climate change. While these can include seasonal...     

Trends and variability in spectral diffuse attenuation of coral reef waters

Coral Reefs - Knowledge of water clarity is an essential component of coral reef ecology. While qualitative trends are well known, there are currently few published records of...     

Correction to: Incongruence between life-history traits and conservation status in reef corals

Coral Reefs - This erratum is published as vendor overlooked corrections with misspelt scientific wording of family Siderastreidae.     

A global coral reef probability map generated using convolutional neural networks

Coral reef research and management efforts can be improved when supported by reef maps providing local-scale details across global extents. However, such maps are difficult to generate due to the broad geographic range of coral reefs, the complexities of relating satellite imagery to geomorphic or ecological realities, and other challenges. However, reef extent maps are one of the most commonly used and most valuable data products from the perspective of reef scientists and managers. Here, we used convolutional neural networks to generate a globally consistent coral reef probability map—a probabilistic estimate of the geospatial extent of reef ecosystems—to facilitate scientific, conservation, and management efforts. We combined a global mosaic of high spatial resolution Planet Dove satellite imagery with regional Millennium Coral Reef Mapping Project reef extents to build training, validation, and application datasets. These datasets trained our reef extent prediction model, a neural network with a dense-unet architecture followed by a random forest classifier, which was used to produce a global coral reef probability map. Based on this probability map, we generated a global coral reef extent map from a 60% threshold of reef probability (reef: probability ≥ 60%, non-reef: probability < 60%). Our findings provide a proof-of-concept method for global reef extent estimates using a consistent and readily updateable methodology that leverages modern deep learning approaches to support downstream users. These maps are openly-available through the Allen Coral Atlas.

     

Zooplankton drive diurnal changes in oxygen concentration at Tisler cold-water coral reef

Coral Reefs - Tisler Reef is a Norwegian cold-water coral reef in the Northeastern Skagerrak, which lies at an average depth of 120&nbsp;m, is constructed principally of the scleractinian coral...     

Uptake of groundwater nitrogen by a near-shore coral reef community on Bermuda

Coral Reefs - Nutrient enrichment can slow growth, enhance bioerosion rates, and intensify algal competition for reef-building corals. In areas of high human population density and/or limited waste...