Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia; The Mina & Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Oct 20;844:157180. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.157180. Epub 2022 Jul 6.
Climate change is degrading coral reefs around the world. Mass coral bleaching events have become more frequent in recent decades, leading to dramatic declines in coral cover. Mesophotic coral ecosystems (30-150 m depth) comprise an estimated 50-80 % of global coral reef area. The potential for these to act as refuges from climate change is unresolved. Here, we report three mesophotic-specific coral bleaching events in the northern Red Sea over the course of eight years. Over the last decade, faster temperature increases at mesophotic depths resulted in ~50 % decline in coral populations, while the adjacent shallow coral reefs remained intact. Further, community structure shifted from hard coral dominated to turf algae dominated throughout these recurrent bleaching events. Our results do not falsify the notion of the northern Red Sea as a thermal refuge for shallow coral reefs, but question the capacity of mesophotic ecosystems to act as a universal tropical refuge.
气候变化正在破坏世界各地的珊瑚礁。近年来，大规模珊瑚白化事件变得更加频繁，导致珊瑚覆盖面积急剧减少。中光层珊瑚生态系统（30-150 米深度）估计占全球珊瑚礁面积的 50-80%。这些珊瑚礁是否有可能成为应对气候变化的避难所，目前尚未确定。在这里，我们报告了在过去八年中，红海北部发生的三次中光层特有的珊瑚白化事件。在过去的十年中，中光层温度的快速上升导致珊瑚种群减少了约 50%，而相邻的浅珊瑚礁则保持完整。此外，在这些反复发生的白化事件中，群落结构从以硬珊瑚为主转变为以藻坪为主。我们的研究结果并没有否定红海北部作为浅珊瑚礁热避难所的概念，但质疑中光层生态系统作为普遍热带避难所的能力。
