TY - JOUR
T1 - Corals at the edge of environmental limits
T2 - A new conceptual framework to re-define marginal and extreme coral communities
AU - Schoepf, Verena
AU - Baumann, Justin H.
AU - Barshis, Daniel J.
AU - Browne, Nicola K.
AU - Camp, Emma F.
AU - Comeau, Steeve
AU - Cornwall, Christopher E.
AU - Guzmán, Héctor M.
AU - Riegl, Bernhard
AU - Rodolfo-Metalpa, Riccardo
AU - Sommer, Brigitte
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge the following funding: a Vidi Fellowship of the Dutch Research Council ( VI.Vidi.203.069 ) to VS, an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award ( DE190100142 ) to EFC, a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship from the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi to CEC, a Victoria University of Wellington FSRG to CEC and VS, an ANR Grant n. ANR15CE02-0006-01 from the French National Research Agency and funding from the International CO 2 Natural Analogues ( ICONA ) Network to RRM, and a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the University of Technology Sydney to BS.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors
PY - 2023/8/1
Y1 - 2023/8/1
N2 - The worldwide decline of coral reefs has renewed interest in coral communities at the edge of environmental limits because they have the potential to serve as resilience hotspots and climate change refugia, and can provide insights into how coral reefs might function in future ocean conditions. These coral communities are often referred to as marginal or extreme but few definitions exist and usage of these terms has therefore been inconsistent. This creates significant challenges for categorising these often poorly studied communities and synthesising data across locations. Furthermore, this impedes our understanding of how coral communities can persist at the edge of their environmental limits and the lessons they provide for future coral reef survival. Here, we propose that marginal and extreme coral communities are related but distinct and provide a novel conceptual framework to redefine them. Specifically, we define coral reef extremeness solely based on environmental conditions (i.e., large deviations from optimal conditions in terms of mean and/or variance) and marginality solely based on ecological criteria (i.e., altered community composition and/or ecosystem functioning). This joint but independent assessment of environmental and ecological criteria is critical to avoid common pitfalls where coral communities existing outside the presumed optimal conditions for coral reef development are automatically considered inferior to coral reefs in more traditional settings. We further evaluate the differential potential of marginal and extreme coral communities to serve as natural laboratories, resilience hotspots and climate change refugia, and discuss strategies for their conservation and management as well as priorities for future research. Our new classification framework provides an important tool to improve our understanding of how corals can persist at the edge of their environmental limits and how we can leverage this knowledge to optimise strategies for coral reef conservation, restoration and management in a rapidly changing ocean.
AB - The worldwide decline of coral reefs has renewed interest in coral communities at the edge of environmental limits because they have the potential to serve as resilience hotspots and climate change refugia, and can provide insights into how coral reefs might function in future ocean conditions. These coral communities are often referred to as marginal or extreme but few definitions exist and usage of these terms has therefore been inconsistent. This creates significant challenges for categorising these often poorly studied communities and synthesising data across locations. Furthermore, this impedes our understanding of how coral communities can persist at the edge of their environmental limits and the lessons they provide for future coral reef survival. Here, we propose that marginal and extreme coral communities are related but distinct and provide a novel conceptual framework to redefine them. Specifically, we define coral reef extremeness solely based on environmental conditions (i.e., large deviations from optimal conditions in terms of mean and/or variance) and marginality solely based on ecological criteria (i.e., altered community composition and/or ecosystem functioning). This joint but independent assessment of environmental and ecological criteria is critical to avoid common pitfalls where coral communities existing outside the presumed optimal conditions for coral reef development are automatically considered inferior to coral reefs in more traditional settings. We further evaluate the differential potential of marginal and extreme coral communities to serve as natural laboratories, resilience hotspots and climate change refugia, and discuss strategies for their conservation and management as well as priorities for future research. Our new classification framework provides an important tool to improve our understanding of how corals can persist at the edge of their environmental limits and how we can leverage this knowledge to optimise strategies for coral reef conservation, restoration and management in a rapidly changing ocean.
KW - Climate change refugia
KW - Environmental variability
KW - High-latitude reefs
KW - Natural laboratories
KW - Resilience hotspots
KW - Turbid reefs
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85154029269&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163688
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.163688
M3 - Review article
C2 - 37105476
AN - SCOPUS:85154029269
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 884
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 163688
ER -