The Future of Coral Reefs

What does it mean to be functionally extinct?

A species or organism is no longer playing a significant role in its ecosystem

What two species of coral are functionally extinct?

elkhorn and staghorn coral

What are passive forms of protenction?

mitigation of environmental stress and promotion of natural recovery

What are active forms of environmental protection?

human intervention to directly help an ecosystem recover and improve their state

Is conservation passive or active?

passive

Is restoration passive or active?

active

is the removal or reductions of stressors and letting natural recovery happen passive or active?

passive

Is water quality improvement, fishing regulation, MPAs, and anchoring rules passive or active?

passive

is depending on natural processes like larval supply and recruitment passive or active?

passive

is directly manipulating the reef by growing, moving, or planting corals passive or active?

active

are nurseries, outplanting, larval seeding, and substrate stabilization passive or active?

active

is depending on funding, labor, and monitoring passive or active

active

What began as a response to ship grounding and focuses on repairing reefs as natural breakwaters?

restoration

What happened with restoration in the 70s and 80s?

it became concerned with biological and ecological function of reefs and transplanting coral fragments

When did we see the first large scale restoration projects in Indo-Pacific and the Red Sea which focused on ecological value of reefs

late 1990s

What are ecosystem services, associated diversity, ecological role in the ocean, and maintaining coral diversity?

reasons to restore corals

What are two methods of restoration?

asexual and sexual propagation

What are coral gardening, in-water nurseries, microfragmentation, outpplanting and attachment methods examples of?

asexual propagation

What are larval seeding, settlement substrates, and seeding devices examples of?

sexual propagation

What is coral gardening?

growing corals in nurseries and then outplanting corals onto the reef

What genera of coral is fast growing, loves to fragment and was left endangered by white band disease?

Acropora

What does gardening reduce?

competition for light and substrate, predation, and sediment and increase water flow

What are the cost and tech material requirements of coral gardening?

law cost and low tech materials

Why is coral gardening beneficial for volunteers?

it is easily trainable

What are some additional benefits of coral gardening?

common garden experiments, genetic repository, public awareness, and moving away from a doom and gloom narrative

what uses science to make restoration smarter and more effective?

ecological engineering

Seeding reefs with stress resistant hosts/symbionts is an example of what?

ecosystem engineering

What is an example of ecological engineering?

outplant and nursery site selection

Why is outplant and nursery site selection an example of ecosystem enginering?

because you can consider things like presence of herbivores, absence of predators, other healthy corals and other things that will lead to outplanting success for your corals

What are the benefits of using shade cloth to protect coral reefs?

reduced light stress under elevated sea surface temperature leading to a reduction in bleaching

Is shade cloth feasible for protecting all corals?

no it is only feasible for a local scale

What do these refuges support?

remnant metapopulation

What are coral metapopulations?

The surviving fragmented networks of local coral reefs that remain connected through larval dispersal after widespread habitat loss, bleaching, or disease

Why are these metapopulations bad?

because it leaves surviving reef isolated, genetically weak, and unable to recover after future disasters

What are the implications of metapopulations for management and restoration activities?

it shows us where we might allocate mitigation or restoration efforts, where resilient or resistance populations are found and where populations may be able to expand if we can reduce emissions and avoid the worst warming

What is microfragmentation an example of?

ecological engineering

why is microfragmentation important?

it stimulates healing response for faster growth

What is the approach to microfragmentation?

outplanting onto dead massive corals and letting the fragments fuse to cover the coral

what is microfragmentation?

Cutting healthy corals into tiny pieces which triggers a healing response which accelerates growth

What is selective breeding for heat tolerance, assisted gene flow, symbiont manipulation and probiotics and example of?

assisted evolution and intervention

What is induced acclimitization/epigenetics an example of?

Assisted genetics/evolution

what is induced climitization/epigenetics?

stress expose natural corals to induce transgenerational acclimation via epigenetics

what is epigentics?

the study of how your behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way your genes work, without altering the underlying DNA sequence

What is microbial community modification and example of?

assisted genetics/evolution

What is microbial community modification?

changing microbes to create resistance in coral

What is slective breeding an example of?

assisted genetics/evolution

What is selective breeding?

breed the ones you- naturally or artificially occurring

What is laboratory evolution of Symbiodiniaceae and example of?

assisted genetics/evolution

What is laboratory evolution of symbiodiniaceae?

exposing symbiodiniaceae to artificial mutagen to increase mutation rates and select for tolerant genotypes

What are the steps of laboratory evolution of symbiodiniaceae?

1. culture symbiont clones

2. slowly bring up temperature to induce thermal selection pressure

3. culture new symbionts still living, presumably thermally tolerant now

4. Test wild type and selected symbionts at 27 and 31 degrees celsius to tease out effect within experiment acclimation

What is the method in the toolkit that involves rubble stabilization and artificial structures?

substrate

What are forms of artificial structures?

reef balls, artificial reefs, and eco reefs

What is gray-green restoration an example of?

ecological engineering

What is gray-green restoration

using a combo of artificial reefs (physical structures and shoreline protection) and outplanting (coral diversity and ecological function)

What do juvenile fish need?

structurally complex habitats

What happens to juvenile fish without some complex habitat?

fish biodiversity on reefs will plummet

When the juvenile recruits have low complexity habitat what happens to the reef?

the reef will be vulnerable and may never recover due to lack of replenishment of adult fish stocks

What happens to fish species richness when juvenile fish had high canopy macoalgal habitat to grow up in vs low?

fish species richness increases across macoalgal and coral reefs where they decrease if juveniles had low canopy cover

What is 3D printing of corals an example of?

A restoration technique

What is 3D printing in coral resotration?

using biodegradable filament to create 3D models of coral skeletons

What in the tool kit involves removing predators and algae, nursery evacuation during heatwaves, and sewage and pollution mitigation?

Supporting actions

What are temporary closures, managing recreational use, managing risk from invasive species, managing coral predators, protecting herbivores, and reducing land-based impacts an example of?

Threat reduction

What are setting limits/carrying capacity, managing reef activities and instilling responsible reef practices an example of?

managing recreational use

what are prevention, detection, control, and restoration examples of?

managing invasive species

What are crown of thorn starfish outbreaks tied to land based sources of nutrient and remediation through manual removal and injection with bile salt an example of?

managing coral predators

what are area closures, gear restrictions, species bans, temporal closures, and restoration with urchins an example of?

protecting herbivores

What are erosion/sediment reduction, sewage and storm management, reducing chemicals from agriculture, and community engagement examples of?

reducing land-based impacts

What is maintaining adequate reef fish biomass as a key to managing resilient coral reefs an example of?

ecosystem-based management

When do invasions by invasive species tend to happen?

when ecosystems lose resilience and become unstable

What increases vulnerability to further degradation?

invasive species

What are examples of major coral reef invasions?

sun corals and lionfish

what are the two types of feedback loops?

negative and positive

What is a positive feedback loop

Process in which the output or outcome of a system reinforces and amplifies the original change pushing the system further away from its starting point rather than returning to it to a baseline

what is a negative feedback loop?

A self-regulating process where a system detects a change away from its normal target state and triggers a response to counteract or reverse that change

What is an example of a positive feedback loop

Invasions causing more degradation, which causes more invasions and more degradation

What is an example of natural biocontrol?

lionfish have been found in the stomach of groupers so avoiding overfishing of groupers could lead to a decline in lionfish

What is an example of public participation for invasive species management?

lion fish derbies

What is a problem with restoration?

it is expensive

What is happening to restored corals?

they are still dying due to climate change and direct anthropogenic disturbances

What is the problem with gardening?

just a band aid

What is the problem with assisted evolution?

it is ecologically scary

What is the problem with scale?

it is too small we need much larger active restoration projects to make a difference

How do we know if restoration is working?

we don’t there is no widespread monitoring of restored sites

Do we know hot to restore all corals?

no we only know how to restore one genus in the atlantic and around five in the pacific though this is changing

How can we improve restoration?

we need to know why we are doing restoration which will inform which species and methodologies are most useful we can’t save everything so we need to make choices and it is already happening so we need to figure out how to do it effectively and efficiently