Delineating the Coral Triangle

By J. Veron, L. Devantier, E. Turak, A. Green, Stuart Kininmonth, M. Stafford-Smith, Nate A. Peterson. 2009

595 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Spatial analyses of coral distributions at spe- cies level delineate the Coral Triangle and provide new insights into patterns of diversity and endemism around the globe. This study shows that the Coral Triangle, an area extending from the Philippines to the Solomon Islands, has 605 zooxanthellate corals including 15 re- gional endemics. This amounts to 76% of the world's total species complement, giving this province the world's highest conservation priority. Within the Coral Triangle, highest richness resides in the Bird's Head Peninsula of Indonesian Papua which hosts 574 species, with indi- vidual reefs supporting up to 280 species ha -1 . Reasons for the exceptional richness of the Coral Triangle include the geological setting, physical environment and an ar- ray of ecological processes. These findings, supported by parallel distributions of reef fishes and other taxa, provide a clear scientific justification for the Coral Triangle Ini- tiative, arguably one of the world's most significant reef conservation undertakings.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4bf91f00c809c14de09ab362e6e0cd78065064a5

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Citations in the corpus

Ecosystem services approach for community-based ecotourism: towards an equitable and sustainable blue economy (2020, background): “…Coral Triangle is located in the western Pacific Ocean and is considered to be the world’s epicenter for marine biodiversity, supporting more than 600 of the world’s coral reef species (Veron et al., 2009), including the highest diversity of reef fish, seagrass, and mangroves (Green et al., 2008).”
Exploitation-related reef fish species richness depletion in the epicenter of marine biodiversity (2011, background): “, Bellwood and Hughes 2001); the Coral Triangle does not include Australia (Veron et al. 2009) and, in addition to Indonesia, includes several other countries with diverse geological origins.”
Marine shelf habitat: biogeography and evolution (2013, background): “The geographic position of the CT (East Indies Triangle), including the Philippines, Indonesia and New Guinea, was first delineated by Briggs (1987), followed by Hoeksema (2007) and Veron et al. (2009).”
Comparative Phylogeography of the Coral Triangle and Implications for Marine Management (2011, background): “Early studies on Linckia laevigata indicated Pleistocene vicariance [77], and subsequent studies with more intensive sampling within the Coral Triangle support the notion of a Sunda Shelf barrier (Figure 1) but also show that the Coral Triangle is a region of admixture of Pacific and Indian Ocean li”
Food security and the Coral Triangle Initiative (2013, unknown): “(Adapted from [74]).”
Evolving coral reef conservation with genetic information (2014, background): “…are thus relevant for conservation decisions (bowen 1998, briggs 2005, rocha et al. 2007, budd and Pandolfi 2010 The Indo-Pacific region contains the most biodiverse as well as some of the most threatened coral reef systems worldwide (Veron et al. 2009, burke et al. 2011, Allen and Erdmann 2012).”
Fishing groupers towards extinction: a global assessment of threats and extinction risks in a billion dollar fishery (2013, background): “Three geographic areas emerged as having a relatively high absolute number of Threatened species: the Caribbean Sea, coastal Brazil and the Coral Triangle, which consists of marine waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste (Veron et al. 2009; F”
Informed opportunism for conservation planning in the Solomon Islands (2011, background): “…Archipelago (Diamond & Mayr 1976; Morrison et al. 2007; Keppel et al. 2010), and as well as being part of the Coral Triangle, the global center of coral reef diversity (Veron et al. 2009), contains some of the largest remaining stands of lowland rainforest in the Pacific (McClatchey et al. 2005).”
Origins of species richness in the Indo‐Malay‐Philippine biodiversity hotspot: evidence for the centre of overlap hypothesis (2013, background): “Variations in the boundaries of the west Indo-Pacific biodiversity hotspot are shown: dashed line, the Coral Triangle (Veron et al., 2009); solid black line, the Indo-Malay-Philippine (IMP) biodiversity hotspot (Carpenter & Springer, 2005), which is nearly identical to the East Indies Triangle (Brig”
Quantifying sample completeness and comparing diversities among assemblages (2020, result): “It should be noted, however, that our diversity comparison between the two areas is not consistent with previous studies which have suggested that the highest peak of species richness lies within the Coral Triangle (Veron et al., 2009); see Section 7.1 for Discussion.”