Hurricanes and coral bleaching linked to changes in coral recruitment in Tobago
Name:
Publisher version
View Source
Access full-text PDFOpen Access
View Source
Check access options
Check access options
Abstract
Knowledge of coral recruitment patterns helps us understand how reefs react following major disturbances and provides us with an early warning system for predicting future reef health problems. The authors have reconstructed and interpreted historical and modern-day recruitment patterns, using a combination of growth modelling and in situ recruitment experiments, in order to understand how hurricanes, storms and bleaching events have influenced coral recruitment on the Caribbean coastline of Tobago. Whilst Tobago does not lie within the main hurricane belt results indicate that regional hurricane events negatively impact coral recruitment patterns in the Southern Caribbean. The results indicate that despite multiple large-scale disturbances corals are still recruiting on Tobago’s marginal reef systems, albeit in low numbers.Citation
Mallela,J. & Crabbe, M.J.C. (2009) 'Hurricanes and coral bleaching linked to changes in coral recruitment in Tobago', Marine Environmental Research, 68(4),pp.158-162Publisher
ElsevierJournal
Marine Environmental ResearchAdditional Links
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19570575http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141113609000658
Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
0141-1136ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1016/j.marenvres.2009.06.001