Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2014. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine Environmental Research 98 (2014): 29-38, doi:10.1016/j.marenvres.2014.04.002.
Description:
As sea surface temperatures rise and the global human population increases, large-scale
field observations of marine organism health and water quality are increasingly
necessary. We investigated the health of corals from the family Fungiidae using visual
observations in relation to water quality and microbial biogeochemistry parameters along
1300 km of the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. At large scales, incidence of lesions
caused by unidentified etiology showed consistent signs, increasing significantly from the
northern to southern coast and positively correlated to annual mean seawater
temperatures. Lesion abundance also increased to a maximum of 96% near the populous
city of Jeddah. The presence of lesioned corals in the region surrounding Jeddah was strongly correlated with elevated concentrations of ammonium and changes in microbial
communities that are linked to decreased water quality. This study suggests that both high
seawater temperatures and nutrient pollution may play an indirect role in the formation of
lesions on corals.
Description:
This research was supported by Award No. USA 00002 to K. Hughen by King Abdullah
University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and a WHOI Ocean Life Institute
postdoctoral scholar fellowship to A. Apprill.
Keywords:
Scleractinia
;
Saudi Arabia
;
Microbes
;
Climate change
;
Marine ecology
;
Nutrients
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
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