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.2019 Mar 13;286(1898):20190235.
doi: 10.1098/rspb.2019.0235.

Acclimatization of massive reef-building corals to consecutive heatwaves

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Acclimatization of massive reef-building corals to consecutive heatwaves

Thomas M DeCarlo et al. Proc Biol Sci..

Abstract

Reef-building corals typically live close to the upper limits of their thermal tolerance and even small increases in summer water temperatures can lead to bleaching and mortality. Projections of coral reef futures based on forecasts of ocean temperatures indicate that by the end of this century, corals will experience their current thermal thresholds annually, which would lead to the widespread devastation of coral reef ecosystems. Here, we use skeletal cores of long-lived Porites corals collected from 14 reefs across the northern Great Barrier Reef, the Coral Sea, and New Caledonia to evaluate changes in their sensitivity to heat stress since 1815. High-density 'stress bands'-indicative of past bleaching-first appear during a strong pre-industrial El Niño event in 1877 but become significantly more frequent in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in accordance with rising temperatures from anthropogenic global warming. However, the proportion of cores with stress bands declines following successive bleaching events in the twenty-first century despite increasing exposure to heat stress. Our findings demonstrate an increase in the thermal tolerance of reef-building corals and offer a glimmer of hope that at least some coral species can acclimatize fast enough to keep pace with global warming.

Keywords: acclimatization; climate change; coral bleaching; coral reefs; ocean warming.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Heat stress on coral reefs in the twenty-first century. (a) Map of the Australia region, with dashed box indicating the GBR, Coral Sea, and Nouméa area. (b–f) Maps of maximum DHW at 5 km resolution per annum (colours) for key years with the highest DHW. (g) Annual maximum DHW for the northern GBR (blue), Coral Sea (orange), and Nouméa (grey). Dashed red line indicates the nominal 4°C-weeks bleaching threshold.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Coral skeletal core records of heat stress. (a) μCT scans (dark/light shading = low/high density) reveal discrete high-density stress bands and partial mortality scars preserved within the skeletons of long-livedPorites corals. Characteristic signatures of heat stress are shown for the years with the most stress bands recorded (2016, 2015, 2010, 2002, and 1982) and the oldest stress band in our dataset (1877). Scale bars are 5 mm. (b) Verification of the timing of a stress band as January–March 2015 is confirmed by monthly dissepiment counts (yellow) superimposed onto a μCT image of the same coral. (c) Stress band proportion (black bars) in all cores from 1815 to 2017 and (d) 2000–2017. The red line in (c) indicates the number of cores in the dataset per year.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Declining sensitivity to heat stress. (a) Proportion of cores with stress bands in all years of the satellite era (1982–2017, crosses) and the years with the most evidence of heat stress (symbols indicate year, colours indicate location, and symbol size indicates number of replicates). Light grey lines show constant sensitivities to heat stress, defined as the ratio of stress band proportion to maximum DHW. (b) Sensitivity to heat stress in the twenty-first century (colours are the same asa). Regression lines are shown for each region (blue, grey, and orange) and for the pooled data (black), with the grey error bound indicating the 95% confidence interval of the pooled fit. Error bars indicate uncertainty (1σ) based on a 10% rate of false positives in stress band assignments.
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