Long-term variation of octocoral populations in St. John, US Virgin Islands

The decline in abundance of scleractinian corals over the past three decades in the Caribbean has raised the possibility that other important benthic taxa, such as octocorals, are also changing in abundance. We used photoquadrats taken over 20 yr from reefs (7–9 m depth) at six sites on the south co...

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Vydané v:Coral reefs Ročník 34; číslo 4; s. 1099 - 1109
Hlavní autori: Lenz, Elizabeth A., Bramanti, Lorenzo, Lasker, Howard R., Edmunds, Peter J.
Médium: Journal Article
Jazyk:English
Vydavateľské údaje: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.12.2015
Springer Nature B.V
Predmet:
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Coral reefs
Freshwater & Marine Ecology
Gorgonia
Islands
Life Sciences
Oceanography
Plant populations
Population decline
Population density
Reefs
Scleractinia
Taxa
Virgin Islands-US
United States > US
ASW, USA, Florida, Florida Keys
ASW, Caribbean Sea
ASW, Caribbean Sea, Lesser Antilles, US Virgin Is
Coral reefs
Gorgonians
Caribbean
Octocorals
ISSN:0722-4028, 1432-0975
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Shrnutí:The decline in abundance of scleractinian corals over the past three decades in the Caribbean has raised the possibility that other important benthic taxa, such as octocorals, are also changing in abundance. We used photoquadrats taken over 20 yr from reefs (7–9 m depth) at six sites on the south coast of St. John, US Virgin Islands, to test the hypothesis that octocorals have changed in abundance since 1992. Octocorals were counted in 0.25 m 2 photoquadrats at 2- to 3-yr intervals and identified to genus or family. Overall, there was variation over time in population density of octocorals (pooled among taxa, and also separately for Antillogorgia spp., Gorgonia spp., and plexaurids) at each site, and densities remained unchanged or increased over 20 yr; where increases in density occurred, the effects were accentuated after 2002. The local-scale analysis was expanded to the Caribbean (including the Florida Keys) by compiling data for octocoral densities from 31 studies for reefs at ≤25 m depth between 1968 and 2013. At this scale, analyses were limited by the paucity of historical data, and despite a weak trend of higher octocoral densities in recent decades, statistically, there was no change in octocoral abundance over time. Together with data from the whole Caribbean, the present analysis suggests that octocorals have not experienced a decadal-scale decline in population density, which has occurred for many scleractinian corals.
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ISSN:0722-4028
1432-0975
DOI:10.1007/s00338-015-1315-x