Urgent need for coral demography in a world where corals are disappearing
Urgent need for coral demography in a world where corals are disappearing
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DOI：
10.3354/meps13205
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发表时间：
2020-02-06
影响因子：
2.5
通讯作者：
Riegl, Bernhard
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Edmunds, Peter J.;Riegl, Bernhard
珊瑚礁因其生物学和经济重要性而长期以来一直引起人们的关注，但这种兴趣现在已经转向研究功能性灭绝的可能性。珊瑚丰度的普遍下降推动了珊瑚礁研究动机的转变，并促进了记录正在发生的变化的监测活动的激增。尽管人们将监测视为一项科学事业，但其主要用途仍然是量化珊瑚、大型藻类和其他一些空间持有者的覆盖范围。几十年前，珊瑚覆盖在评估珊瑚丰度变化的后果方面的局限性就已被强调。然而，忽视最适合这项任务的工具（人口统计方法）并继续强调不理想的工具（珊瑚覆盖），表明这些限制并未得到广泛认识。因此，珊瑚礁监测在其潜力方面仍然表现不佳，从而使科学家无法采用必要的方法来预测珊瑚礁的命运和测试针对珊瑚覆盖面积下降的直接原因的假设。我们认为，珊瑚礁危机造成了对珊瑚人口统计的需求，这种需求现在比 4 年前更加迫切。现代人口统计方法非常适合满足这一需求，但为了发挥其潜力，需要考虑扩大珊瑚礁生态监测的可能性，以提供对其基础分类单元石珊瑚进行人口统计分析所需的数据。
Coral reefs have long attracted attention because of their biological and economic importance, but this interest now has turned to examining the possibility of functional extirpation. Widespread declines in coral abundances have fueled the shift in motivation for studying reefs and catalyzed the proliferation of monitoring to record the changes underway. Despite appreciation of monitoring as a scientific endeavor, its primary use has continued to be the quantification of cover of coral, macroalgae, and a few other space holders. The limitations of coral cover in evaluating the consequences of changing coral abundance were highlighted decades ago. Yet neglect of the tools most appropriate for this task (demographic approaches) and continuing emphasis on a tool (coral cover) that is not ideal, indicates that these limitations are not widely appreciated. Reef monitoring therefore continues to underperform with respect to its potential, thus depriving scientists of the approaches necessary to project the fate of coral reefs and test hypotheses focused on the proximal causes of declining coral cover. We make the case that the coral reef crisis creates a need for coral demography that is more acute now than 4 decades ago. Modern demographic approaches are well suited to meet this need, but to realize their potential, consideration will need to be given to the possibility of expanding ecological monitoring of coral reefs to provide the data necessary for demographic analyses of their foundation taxon, the Scleractinia.