Topic
Favia
About: Favia is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 117 publications have been published within this topic receiving 3691 citations.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
TL;DR: Compared changes in reef ecology in four national parks with four non-park areas to determine how coral mortality and herbivory interact under the two management regimes found consistent losses of coral genera from sites, suggesting that some genera persisted, but at very low population densities and small colony sizes.
Abstract: Interaction between the El Nino and Indian Ocean dipole ocean–atmosphere quasi-periodic oscillations produced one of the warmest seawater temperatures on record in 1998. During the warm northeast monsoon in March and April, Kenya's shallow coral reefs experienced water temperatures between 30 and 31 °C and low winds. This caused large-scale bleaching of hard and soft corals at the end of March, which extended into the cooler months of May and June. Direct observations of coloration in the Mombasa Marine National Park found that the coral genera Acropora, Millepora, Pocillopora, branching Porites and Stylophora showed rapid bleaching and high mortality by the end of May 1998. Other hard coral genera that bleached significantly included Echinopora, Favia, Favites, Galaxea, Hydnophora, Goniopora, Leptoria, Montipora, Platygyra and massive Porites, but mortality was variable among these genera. Astreopora, Coscinarea, Cyphastrea and Pavona were the least responsive genera, with some paling, but little evidence of full bleaching or significant mortality. We compared changes in reef ecology in four national parks (protected from fishing) with four non-park areas (heavy fishing) to determine how coral mortality and herbivory interact under the two management regimes. Benthic studies using line transects in 16 sites spread across ~150 km of coastline were completed before and 6 to 13 months after the bleaching event and found that the cover of nine hard coral genera including Acropora, Alveopora, Favites, Goniopora, Platygyra, Pocillopora, branching Porites, Stylophora and Tubipora decreased significantly (p 85%, and soft coral cover decreased by ~75%. One year after the bleaching, sites in the national parks experienced 88 and 115% increases in turf and fleshy algal cover, respectively, while reefs outside the parks had a 220% increase in fleshy algal cover with no appreciable change in turf-forming algal cover. There was, however, high spatial variation and no statistically significant difference in the change in fleshy algal cover between sites in and out of the national parks. Estimates of herbivory by both fish and sea urchins at each site were a good predictor of the change in fleshy algal cover over the 1-year post-bleaching period in about half of the sites. The other half of the sites did not exhibit large changes in fleshy algal cover, and algal cover at these sites was not clearly influenced by herbivory. The number of coral genera per transect at each site decreased significantly by 31 and 44% in and out of the national parks respectively. Larger-scale search sampling to determine the presence/absence of genera in study sites found consistent losses of coral genera from sites, but produced smaller differences than the line-transect method, suggesting that some genera persisted, but at very low population densities and small colony sizes.
287 citations
TL;DR: Success of coral recruitment (density of coral spat) increased in the absence of Diadema due to the alleviation of biological disturbance imposed by this urchin's feeding activities, and the presence of Echinometra viridis in high densities created conditions where growth and fusion in Agaricia spat were optimized.
266 citations
TL;DR: There was no single response of these common corals to warm water but data, collected during an extreme warm-water anomaly, indicate that the loss of color is most frequently a sign of morbidity, particularly for branching and encrusting taxa.
Abstract: Reef corals are likely to have many subtle but four gross responses to anomalous warm water. These are (1) not bleach and live (mortality 20%), (3) bleach and live, and (4) bleach and die. The frequency of these four possible gross responses was determined for 18 common coral taxa over an exceptionally warm 1998 El Nino where intense bleaching was observed, and mortality determined from line transects averaged 41.2±34.7 (±SD). Field studies included (1) recording the loss of color (bleaching) and observing recently dead individuals among 6,803 colonies during five sampling periods and (2) estimating mortality based on 180 m of line-intercept transects completed 4 months before and near the end of the bleaching episode. There was no clear relationship between the loss of color and either direct observation or transect-based estimates of mortality for the 18 taxa. The morphology of the taxa did not influence color loss but branching and encrusting taxa had higher mortality than massive and submassive taxa. Loss of color and mortality are the most common responses to warm water as only Pavona did not lose color or die and only two taxa, Cyphastrea and Millepora, did not significantly lose color but died. Of the 15 taxa that lost color, five taxa,
Astreopora, Favia, Favites,
Goniopora, and Leptoria, did not die. These taxa are those most likely to have reduced potential mortality by the loss of pigments and associated algal symbionts. Death of the branching taxa was detected reasonably by direct field observation but some taxa were underestimated when compared with mortality estimates based on line transects. Death of encrusting and massive taxa including
Echinopora, Galaxea, Hydnophora,
Montipora, Platygyra, and massive Porites was poorly detected from direct observations but they proved to have modest to high mortality (20–80%) based on line transects. There was no single response of these common corals to warm water but these data, collected during an extreme warm-water anomaly, indicate that the loss of color is most frequently a sign of morbidity, particularly for branching and encrusting taxa.
259 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a study of reef rehabilitation, whole coral colonies (primarily Acropora, Pocillopora, Porites, Favia and Favites) were transplanted and cemented in place onto three approximately 20 m 2 areas of Armorflex concrete mats on a 0.8-1.5 m deep reef-flat in the Maldives which had been severely degraded by coral mining.
Abstract: As part of a study of reef rehabilitation, whole coral colonies (primarily Acropora, Pocillopora, Porites, Favia and Favites) were transplanted and cemented in place onto three approximately 20 m 2 areas of Armorflex concrete mats on a 0.8-1.5 m deep reef-flat in the Maldives which had been severely degraded by coral mining. Growth, in situ mortality, and losses from mats due to wave action of a total of 530 transplants were monitored over 28 months. Natural recruitment of corals to both the transplanted Armorflex areas and concrete mats without transplants was also studied. Overall survivorship of corals 28 months after transplantation was 51%. Most losses of transplants due to wave action occurred during the first 7 months when 25% were lost, with only a further 5% of colonies being lost subsequently. Within 16 months most colonies had accreted naturally to the concrete mats. Thirty-two percent of transplants which remained attached died with Acropora hyacinthus and Pocillopora verrucosa having the highest mortality rates (approx. 50% mortality over two years) and Porites lobata and P. lutea the lowest (2.8 and 8.1% mortality respectively over two years). Growth rates were very variable with a quarter to a third of transplants showing negative growth during each inter-survey period. Acropora hyacinthus, A, cytherea and A. divaricata transplants had the highest growth rates (colony mean linear radial extension 4.15-5.81 cm y-l), followed by Pocillopora verrucosa (mean 2.51 cm y-l). Faviids and poritids had lowest growth rates. Favia and Favites showed the poorest response to transplantation whilst A cropora divaricata, which combined a high growth rate with relatively low mortality, appeared particularly amenable to transplantation. Natural recruitment did not differ significantly between concrete mats with and with- out transplanted corals. 'Visible' recruits were first record- ed 10 months after emplacement of the mats and were predominantly Acropora and Pocillopora. On near vertical surfaces their density was almost 18 m -2. Recruits grew fast
218 citations
TL;DR: Overall, although there were changes in some of the parameters listed above, and in coral genus abundance patterns, no evidence for decreased diversity and ecological health of sedimentinfluenced reefs could be found for the set of community-level measurements of the shallow-water coral assemblage.
198 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 4 |
| 2020 | 3 |
| 2019 | 6 |
| 2018 | 4 |
| 2017 | 3 |
| 2016 | 7 |