Institute for Global Ecology, Florida Institute of Technology, 150 West University Blvd., Melbourne, FL, 32901, USA.
Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, USA.
Nat Commun. 2019 Mar 20;10(1):1264. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09238-2.
Thermal-stress events associated with climate change cause coral bleaching and mortality that threatens coral reefs globally. Yet coral bleaching patterns vary spatially and temporally. Here we synthesize field observations of coral bleaching at 3351 sites in 81 countries from 1998 to 2017 and use a suite of environmental covariates and temperature metrics to analyze bleaching patterns. Coral bleaching was most common in localities experiencing high intensity and high frequency thermal-stress anomalies. However, coral bleaching was significantly less common in localities with a high variance in sea-surface temperature (SST) anomalies. Geographically, the highest probability of coral bleaching occurred at tropical mid-latitude sites (15-20 degrees north and south of the Equator), despite similar thermal stress levels at equatorial sites. In the last decade, the onset of coral bleaching has occurred at significantly higher SSTs (∼0.5 °C) than in the previous decade, suggesting that thermally susceptible genotypes may have declined and/or adapted such that the remaining coral populations now have a higher thermal threshold for bleaching.
与气候变化相关的热应激事件导致珊瑚白化和死亡，从而威胁到全球的珊瑚礁。然而，珊瑚白化的模式在空间和时间上存在差异。在这里，我们综合了 1998 年至 2017 年间在 81 个国家的 3351 个地点进行的珊瑚白化实地观测，并使用一系列环境协变量和温度指标来分析白化模式。在经历高强度和高频率热应激异常的地方，珊瑚白化最为常见。然而，在海面温度（SST）异常方差较高的地方，珊瑚白化的情况明显较少。从地理上看，珊瑚白化的最高概率发生在热带中纬度地区（赤道南北 15-20 度），尽管赤道地区的热应力水平相似。在过去十年中，珊瑚白化的开始发生在比前十年更高的 SST（约 0.5°C），这表明易受热影响的基因型可能已经减少和/或适应，因此现在剩余的珊瑚种群对白化的热阈值更高。
