Zahid Fiza, Gajdzik Laura, Korsmeyer Keith E, Cotton Jordyn D, Coker Daren J, Berumen Michael L, DeCarlo Thomas M
College of Natural and Computational Sciences, Hawai'i Pacific University, Honolulu, HI, United States of America.
Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, University of Hawai'i, Honolulu, HI, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2025 Jan 14;20(1):e0316247. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0316247. eCollection 2025.
Climate change is imposing multiple stressors on marine life, leading to a restructuring of ecological communities as species exhibit differential sensitivities to these stressors. With the ocean warming and wind patterns shifting, processes that drive thermal variations in coastal regions, such as marine heatwaves and upwelling events, can change in frequency, timing, duration, and severity. These changes in environmental parameters can physiologically impact organisms residing in these habitats. Here, we investigate the synchrony of coral and reef fish responses to environmental disturbance in the Red Sea, including an unprecedented combination of heat stress and upwelling that led to mass coral bleaching in 2015. We developed cross-dated growth chronologies from otoliths of 156 individuals of two planktivorous damselfish species, Pomacentrus sulfureus and Amblyglyphidodon flavilatus, and from skeletal cores of 48 Porites spp. coral colonies. During and immediately after the 2015 upwelling and bleaching event, damselfishes exhibited a positive growth anomaly but corals displayed reduced growth. Yet, after 2015-2016, these patterns were reversed with damselfishes showing a decline in growth and corals rebounding to pre-disturbance growth rates. Our results reveal an asynchronous response between corals and reef fish, with corals succumbing to the direct effects of heat stress, and then quickly recovering when the heat stress subsided-at least, for those corals that survived the bleaching event. Conversely, damselfish growth temporarily benefited from the events of 2015, potentially due to the increased metabolic demand from increased temperature and increased food supply from the upwelling event, before declining over four years, possibly related to indirect effects associated with habitat degradation following coral mortality. Overall, our study highlights the increasingly complex, often asynchronous, ecological ramifications of climate extremes on the diverse species assemblages of coral reefs.
气候变化正在给海洋生物带来多重压力，导致生态群落发生重组，因为不同物种对这些压力源表现出不同的敏感性。随着海洋变暖和风型转变，驱动沿海地区热变化的过程，如海洋热浪和上升流事件，其频率、时间、持续时间和强度都可能发生变化。这些环境参数的变化会对栖息在这些栖息地的生物产生生理影响。在此，我们研究了红海珊瑚和礁鱼对环境干扰的同步响应，包括2015年导致大规模珊瑚白化的热应激和上升流的前所未有的组合。我们从两种食浮游生物的雀鲷物种（硫磺雀鲷和黄鳍钝雀鲷）的156个个体的耳石以及48个滨珊瑚属珊瑚群落的骨骼核心中开发了交叉定年的生长年表。在2015年上升流和白化事件期间及之后不久，雀鲷表现出正生长异常，但珊瑚生长减少。然而，在2015 - 2016年之后，这些模式发生了逆转，雀鲷生长下降，而珊瑚反弹至干扰前的生长速度。我们的结果揭示了珊瑚和礁鱼之间的异步响应，珊瑚屈服于热应激的直接影响，然后在热应激消退时迅速恢复——至少对于那些在白化事件中幸存下来的珊瑚来说是这样。相反，雀鲷的生长在2015年的事件中暂时受益，这可能是由于温度升高导致的代谢需求增加以及上升流事件带来的食物供应增加，之后在四年内下降，这可能与珊瑚死亡后栖息地退化相关的间接影响有关。总体而言，我们的研究突出了极端气候对珊瑚礁多样物种组合日益复杂且往往异步的生态影响。
