Coral disease, environmental drivers, and the balance between coral and microbial associates
By D. Harvell, E. Jordán-Dahlgren, S. Merkel, Eugene Rosenberg, L. Raymundo, Garriett W Smith, E. Weil, B. Willis. 2007
559 citations recorded by the source corpus.
across the globe, we are witnessing the decline of coral reef ecosystems. One relatively new factor contributing to this decline is the outbreak of destructive infectious diseases, especially on Caribbean reefs. As the Coral Disease Working Group of the Coral Reef Targeted Research Program, our research focuses on four priorities: (1) assessing the global prevalence of coral disease, (2) investigating the environmental drivers of disease, (3) identifying the pathogens that cause disease, and (4) evaluating the coral’s ability to resist disease. Monitoring has revealed new coral-disease syndromes at each of four Global Environmental Fund Centers of Excellence: the Caribbean, the Philippines, Australia, and East Africa. Over the last 20 years, drastic (> 50 percent) loss of coral cover has occurred on the Yucatan Peninsula, even in pristine areas. Global surveys have revealed significant levels of disease and disease outbreaks occurring not only in the Caribbean “hotspots,” but also in sites throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans. By monitoring coral disease, we will create a baseline and long-term data set that can be used to test specific hypotheses about how climate and anthropogenic drivers, such as decreasing water quality, threaten coral reef sustainability. One such hypothesis is that high-temperature anomalies drive outbreaks of disease by hindering the coral’s ability to fi ght infection and by increasing the pathogens’ virulence. We observed recurrent outbreaks following the warm summer months of two of the most damaging diseases in the Caribbean. In addition, we found that coral disease in the Great Barrier Reef correlated with warm temperature anomalies. In the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas, virulence of known coral pathogens and the normal coral flora changed during high-temperature periods. Other stresses such as high nutrients and sedimentation may similarly alter the balance between the coral and its resident microbial flora.
Subfields: Ecology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/737d9e8848e096e057dcbcb567c65a185a4a8cc0
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Citations in the corpus
- Monitoring functional groups of herbivorous reef fishes as indicators of coral reef resilience : a practical guide for coral reef managers in the Asia Pacific region (2009, background): “Climate change has also been linked to the recent proliferation of other threats, particularly coral diseases (Bruno et al 2007, Harvell et al 1999, 2007).”
- Strong relationship between coral bleaching and growth anomalies in massive Porites (2009, background): “Given that this disruption is likely to continue with climate warming, growth anomalies and other related infectious diseases are expected to increase (Harvell et al., 2007).”
- Epidemiology of skeletal eroding band on the Great Barrier Reef and the role of injury in the initiation of this widespread coral disease (2008, background): “2004), New Britain (Papua New Guinea; Neale, personal observation), Palau, the Marshall Islands, the Solitary Islands (Willis and Page, personal observation) and the Philippines (Harvell et al. 2007).”
- Disease ecology meets ecological immunology: understanding the links between organismal immunity and infection dynamics in natural populations (2011, background): “These selected studies are not intended as an exhaustive list, and the strength of the relationships between immune function and infection processes depends on the host species examined Host-pathogen system Topic Relevance of immune findings to infection ⁄ disease Representative publications African”
- Application of remote sensing and GIS inland use/land cover mapping and change detection in a part of south western Nigeria (2007, background): “Black band, white band and yellow band have also been documented in Zanzibar (McClanahan et al., 2004; Harvell et al., 2007).”
- Temporal variability and impact of coral diseases and bleaching in La Parguera, Puerto Rico from 2003–2007 (2009, background): “…they result from global and local environmental stresses such as ocean warming, acidification, nutrient enrichment, deforestation and other local anthropogenic factors (Epstein et al. 1998; Carey 2000; Harvell et al. 2004, 2007, 2009; Weil 2004; Bruno et al. 2003, 2007; Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2007).”
- Coral propagation: a review of techniques for ornamental trade and reef restoration (2017, background): “Corals are susceptible to numerous infectious disease agents including bacterial and fungal pathogens as well as parasites (Willis et al. 2004; Harvell et al. 2007; Bourne et al. 2008, 2015).”