Coral larvae are poor swimmers and require fine-scale reef structure to settle.
Coral larvae are poor swimmers and require fine-scale reef structure to settle.
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DOI：
10.1038/s41598-017-02402-y
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发表时间：
2017-05-22
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Baird AH
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hata T;Madin JS;Cumbo VR;Denny M;Figueiredo J;Harii S;Thomas CJ;Baird AH
珊瑚礁的组合具有高度的动态性，经常受到干扰，预计这种干扰会因气候变化而增加。因此，我们迫切需要更好地理解不同复苏方案背后的机制。最近的研究表明，珊瑚礁结构的复杂性可以促进珊瑚的恢复，但其机制仍不清楚。同样，实验表明，珊瑚幼虫可以区分健康和退化珊瑚礁的水，然而，它们是否可以利用这些线索导航到健康的珊瑚礁是一个悬而未决的问题。在这里，我们使用一个荟萃分析的方法来记录，珊瑚幼虫的游泳速度的数量级低于水流量的测量和关闭珊瑚礁。因此，珊瑚幼虫在公海中航行到珊瑚礁或在珊瑚礁上定居的能力极其有限。然后，我们通过实验表明，即使在模仿平静的回礁流环境的条件下，需要提供幼虫的底层细尺度结构所产生的湍流。我们的结论是，在一些规模的结构复杂性有助于珊瑚恢复，促进珊瑚幼虫的底层和解决。
Reef coral assemblages are highly dynamic and subject to repeated disturbances, which are predicted to increase in response to climate change. Consequently there is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying different recovery scenarios. Recent work has demonstrated that reef structural complexity can facilitate coral recovery, but the mechanism remains unclear. Similarly, experiments suggest that coral larvae can distinguish between the water from healthy and degraded reefs, however, whether or not they can use these cues to navigate to healthy reefs is an open question. Here, we use a meta-analytic approach to document that coral larval swimming speeds are orders of magnitude lower than measurements of water flow both on and off reefs. Therefore, the ability of coral larvae to navigate to reefs while in the open-ocean, or to settlement sites while on reefs is extremely limited. We then show experimentally that turbulence generated by fine scale structure is required to deliver larvae to the substratum even in conditions mimicking calm back-reef flow environments. We conclude that structural complexity at a number of scales assists coral recovery by facilitating both the delivery of coral larvae to the substratum and settlement.