Figure 1. Crown-of-thorns starfish and their legacy. (A) A group of crown-of-thorns starfish converge on the remaining small piece of living coral tissue (lc) on the surface of a tabular coral (Acropora sp.) The other coral tissue has just been consumed by the starfish so that only the white skeleton remains (cs). (B) After crown-of-thorns starfish have removed the living coral tissue, the expo...

The coral reefs at the northernmost tip of Sabah, Borneo will be established under a marine protected area: the Tun Mustapha Park (TMP) by the end of 2015. This area is a passage where the Sulu Sea meets the South China Sea and it is situated at the border of the area of maximum marine biodiversity, the Coral Triangle. The TMP includes fringing and patch reefs established on a relatively shallo...

In the face of increasing climate-related impacts on coral reefs, the integration of ecosystem resilience into marine conservation planning has become a priority. One strategy, including resilient areas in marine protected area (MPA) networks, relies on information on the spatial distribution of resilience. We assess the ability to model and map six indicators of coral reef resilience—stress-to...

Stony corals (Scleractinia) are marine invertebrates that form the foundation and framework upon which tropical reefs are built. The coral animal associates with a diverse microbiome comprised of dinoflagellate algae and other protists, bacteria, archaea, fungi and viruses. Using a metagenomics approach, we analysed the DNA and RNA viral assemblages of seven coral species from the central Great...

Tropical scleractinian corals are particularly vulnerable to global warming as elevated sea surface temperatures (SSTs) disrupt the delicate balance between the coral host and their algal endosymbionts, leading to symbiont expulsion, mass bleaching and mortality. While satellite sensing of SST has proved a reliable predictor of coral bleaching at the regional scale, there are large deviations i...

The persistence of tropical coral reefs is threatened by rapidly increasing climate warming, causing a functional breakdown of the obligate symbiosis between corals and their algal photosymbionts (Symbiodinium) through a process known as coral bleaching. Yet the potential of the coral-algal symbiosis to genetically adapt in an evolutionary sense to warming oceans is unknown. Using a quantitativ...

The induction and regulation of heat shock proteins (hsps) is a significant defense mechanism that can preserve metabolic function and foster recovery from short-term stress events. Present coral sampling methodologies that involve hsp analysis often require the harvesting of large samples of live coral colonies that may already be stressed or in poor health. In the present study, 3 novel proto...

Mounding corals survive bleaching events in greater numbers than branching corals. However, no study to date has determined the underlying physiological and biogeochemical trait(s) that are responsible for mounding coral holobiont resilience to bleaching. Furthermore, the potential of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) as a source of fixed carbon to bleached corals has never been determined. Here, ...

Coral-rich strata of the Leitha Limestone of Badenian age (Middle Miocene) at the type-locality in Grosshoeflein (Burgenland province, Austria) were re-interpreted from an actualistic viewpoint in comparison with Recent Bahamian and Arabian Gulf coral communities. The investigated outcrop (quarry "Fenk'j is interpreted as a sequence of framebuilding coral carpets and non-framebuilding biostroma...

Halogenated pyrroles (halopyrroles) are common chemical moieties found in bioactive bacterial natural products. The halopyrrole moieties of mono- and dihalopyrrole-containing compounds arise from a conserved mechanism in which a proline-derived pyrrolyl group bound to a carrier protein is first halogenated and then elaborated by peptidic or polyketide extensions. This paradigm is broken during ...