Related Papers
Weil E, Rogers C (2011) Coral reef diseases in the Atlantic-Caribbean. Part 5. pages 465-491. In: (editors Zvy Dubinsky, Noga Stambler) Coral Reefs: An Ecosystem in Transition. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-014-4_27
Caroline Rogers
Coral Reefs: An Ecosystem in Transition
Coral Reef Diseases in the Atlantic-Caribbean
2010 •
Ernesto F Weil Machado
Coral Diseases in the Caribbean
Ernesto Weil
Coral reefs are the jewels of the tropical oceans. They boast the highest diversity of all marine ecosystems, aid in the development and protection of other important, productive coastal marine communities, and have provided millions of people with food, building materials, protection from storms, recreation and social stability over thousands of years, and more recently, income, active pharmacological compounds and other benefits. These communities have been deteriorating rapidly in recent times. The continuous emergence of coral reef diseases and increase in bleaching events caused in part by high water temperatures among other factors underscore the need for intensive assessments of their ecological status and causes and their impact on coral reefs.
Coral Health and Disease in the Pacific: Vision for …
Progress in Understanding Coral Diseases in the Caribbean
2009 •
Andy Bruckner
Coral Reef Diseases in the Wider Caribbean
Ernesto Weil
Over the past few decades, coral reef communities around the world have been experiencing increasingly stressful conditions due to a combination of natural and detrimental anthropogenic factors. In the Caribbean, coral reefs have experienced significant losses in hard coral cover due in part to local habitat degradation, over-fishing, pollutant input, bleaching, hurricanes and more recently, diseases. These factors,acting alone or in synergy,can be highly variable on spatial and temporal scales,making it difficult to identify and characterize a single or combined cause(s) of reef deterioration. Bleaching events, for example, have increased in frequency and intensity in the last two decades and their impact has been highly variable both spatially and temporarily. In the Caribbean,bleaching has caused variable, but generally low, coral mortality, unlike the mass mortalities of the scale observed in the Indo-Pacific. In contrast, few coral diseases, with low prevalence and restricted geographic distributions, have been reported for the Indo-Pacific as compared to the Caribbean.
Coral disease hotspots in the Caribbean
Carly J Randall, Robert Van Woesik
Recent outbreaks of coral diseases in the Caribbean have been linked to increasingly stressful sea-surface temperatures (SSTs). Yet, ocean warming is spatially heterogeneous and therefore has the potential to lead to hotspots of disease activity. Here, we take an epidemiological approach to examine spatial differences in the risk of white-band disease on Acropora spp. and yellow-band disease on Orbicella spp. in the Caribbean. Our analysis involved examining the spatial patterns of disease prevalence, and creating a Bayesian-risk model that tested for regional differences in disease risk. The spatial examination of disease prevalence showed several clusters of white-band disease, including high prevalence in the Turks and Caicos, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Belize, whereas yellow-band disease seemed most prevalent along the Yucatan Peninsula. The Bayesian-risk model showed regional clusters of white-band disease near the southern Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the Lesser Antilles, whereas the risk of yellow-band disease was highest in the southern Caribbean. The relative risk of both diseases increased with warmer SSTs. The Bayesian-risk model allowed us to predict where we should expect future outbreaks of coral diseases at a regional scale, and suggests regions where the implementation of disease mitigation plans may be most urgent.
Global Change Biology
Caribbean coral diseases: primary transmission or secondary infection?
2012 •
Erinn Muller
Diseases of aquatic organisms
Ten years of change to coral communities off Mona and Desecheo Islands, Puerto Rico, from disease and bleaching
2009 •
Andrew Bruckner, Ronald Hill
Remote reefs off southwest Puerto Rico have experienced recent losses in live coral cover of 30 to 80%, primarily due to the decline of Montastraea annularis and M. faveolata from disease and bleaching. These species were formerly the largest, oldest, and most abundant corals on these reefs, constituting over 65% of the living coral cover and 40 to 80% of the total number of colonies. From 1998 to 2001, outbreaks of yellow band disease (YBD) and white plague (WP) affected 30 to 60% of the M. annularis (complex) colonies. Disease prevalence declined beginning in 2002, and then increased immediately following the 2005 mass bleaching event. Colonies of M. annularis (complex) have been reduced in abundance by 24 to 32%, and remaining colonies are missing more than half their tissue. Both M. annularis and M. faveolata have failed to recruit, resheeting has been minimal, and exposed skeletal surfaces are being colonized by macroalgae, bioeroding sponges, and hydrozoans. Other scleractinia...
Caribbean Journal of Science
Temporal variability and consequences of coral diseases and bleaching in La Parguera, Puerto Rico from 2003–2007
Ernesto F Weil Machado
Frontiers in Marine Science
The Emergence and Initial Impact of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) in the United States Virgin Islands
2021 •
Tyler Smith
Coral communities in the Caribbean face a new and deadly threat in the form of the highly virulent multi-host stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). In late January of 2019, a disease with signs and characteristics matching that of SCTLD was found affecting a reef off the coast of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI). Identification of its emergence in the USVI provided the opportunity to document the initial evolution of its spatial distribution, coral species susceptibility characteristics, and its comparative impact on coral cover at affected and unaffected coral reef locations. Re-assessments at sentinel sites and long-term monitoring locations were used to track the spread of the disease, assess species affected, and quantify its impact. The disease was initially limited to the southwest of St. Thomas for several months, then spread around the island and to the neighboring island of St. John to the east. Differences in disease prevalence among species were similar to ...
