Coral reefs along the Eastern Brazilian coast extend for a distance of 800 km from 12 degrees to 18 degrees S. They are the largest and the richest reefs of Brazil coasts, and represent the Southernmost coral reefs of the Southwestern Atlantic Ocean. Few reef surveys were performed in the 90's in reef areas of Bahia State, particularly in the Abrolhos reef complex, in the Southernmost side of t...

Coral reefs are diverse ecosystems that support millions of people worldwide by providing coastal protection from waves. Climate change and human impacts are leading to degraded coral reefs and to rising sea levels, posing concerns for the protection of tropical coastal regions in the near future. We use a wave dissipation model calibrated with empirical wave data to calculate the future increa...

Crustose coralline algae (CCA) are key producers of carbonate sediment on reefs today. Despite their importance in modern reef ecosystems, the long-term relationship of CCA with reef development has not been quantitatively assessed in the fossil record. This study includes data from 128 Cenozoic coral reefs collected from the Paleobiology Database, the Paleoreefs Database, as well as the origin...

Much research on coral reefs has documented differential declines in coral and associated organisms. In order to contextualise this general degradation, research on community composition is necessary in the context of varied disturbance histories and the biological processes and physical features thought to retard or promote recovery. We conducted a spatial assessment of coral reef communities ...

6 Abstract The decline of coral reefs has been broadly 7 attributed to human stressors being too strong and perva8 sive, whereas biological processes that may render coral 9 reefs fragile have been sparsely considered. Here we 10 review several ecological factors that can limit the ability 11 of coral reefs to withstand disturbance. These include: (1) 12 Many species lack the adaptive capacity ...

Here, I shall present a brief review of ca.35 years of our studies on changes in the coral species diversity and community structure at Eilat, Red Sea, at several scales in space and time. In the following, I shall: (1) summarize the geographical setting and the geological, physical and biological characteristics of the Gulf of Eilat/Aqaba, then point out the uniqueness of the coral reefs of Ei...

Costa Rica has coral communities and reefs on the Caribbean coast and on the Pacific along the coast and off-shore islands. The Southern section of the Caribbean coast has fringing and patch reefs, carbonate banks, and an incipient algal ridge. The Pacific coast has coral communities, reefs and isolated coral colonies. Coral reefs have been seriously impacted in the last 30 years, mainly by sed...

Coral reefs are increasingly exposed to elevated temperatures that can cause coral bleaching and high levels of mortality of corals and associated organisms. The temperature threshold for coral bleaching depends on the acclimation and adaptation of corals to the local maximum temperature regime. However, because of larval dispersal, coral populations can receive larvae from corals that are adap...

Coral bleaching is a stress response of corals induced by a variety of factors, but these events have become more frequent and intense in response to recent climate-change-related temperature anomalies. We tested the hypothesis that coral reefs affected by bleaching events are currently heavily infested by boring sponges, which are playing a significant role in the destruction of their physical...

Coral reefs are a valuable and vulnerable marine ecosystem. The structure of coral reefs influences their health and ability to fulfill ecosystem functions and services. However, monitoring reef corals largely relies on 1D or 2D estimates of coral cover and abundance that overlook change in ecologically significant aspects of the reefs because they do not incorporate vertical or volumetric info...