Disturbance and the Reorganization of Caribbean Reef Communities: Unique Event or Repeated Pattern?

9902192 Aronson鹿角珊瑚Acropora cervicornis在更新世和全新世是加勒比海珊瑚礁的主要空间占据者和重要的框架构建者。在过去的二十年里，由于一种假定的细菌感染--白带病的爆发，该地区的鹿角珊瑚种群已经死亡。在伯利兹的泻湖珊瑚礁上，鹿角珊瑚的消亡导致了莴苣珊瑚Agaricia tenuifolia的统治地位。这种从Acropora到Agaricia的转变在伯利兹的地下沉积物中产生了一个明确的标志，对从这些珊瑚礁中提取的岩心进行的分析表明，这种事件序列至少在过去3,000年中是独一无二的。类似的蘑菇占主导地位的社区今天在巴拿马西北部的拉古纳德奇里基很常见，距离伯利兹珊瑚礁1,000多公里。这些珊瑚礁以前也是由鹿角珊瑚统治的吗？一项密集的取芯计划将揭示巴拿马珊瑚礁是否与伯利兹的珊瑚礁有类似的近代历史。更重要的是，岩芯将被用来确定鹿角珊瑚的大规模死亡是否是近代特有的，就像伯利兹一样，或者类似的事件是否在过去发生过。如果鹿角珊瑚因疾病而消失是一种新现象，那么它可能与加勒比地区人类活动的加速有关。

9902192AronsonThe staghorn coral Acropora cervicornis was a dominant space-occupier and an important framework constructor of Caribbean coral reefs during the Pleistocene and Holocene. Populations of Acropora have been killed throughout the region over the past two decades by outbreaks of white-band disease, a presumed bacterial infection. On lagoonal reefs in Belize, the demise of Acropora led to dominance by the lettuce coral Agaricia tenuifolia. This Acropora-to-Agaricia transition produced a clear signature in the subsurface sediments in Belize, and analysis of cores extracted from these reefs showed this sequence of events to be unique in at least the last 3,000 years. Similar Agaricia-dominated communities are common today in the Laguna de Chiriqui in northwestern Panama, more than 1,000 km from the Belizean reefs. Were these reefs also previously dominated by Acropora? An intensive program of coring will reveal whether the Panamanian reefs have a similar Recent history to those in Belize. More important, the cores will be used to determine if the mass mortality of Acropora was unique to the Recent, as in Belize, or whether similar events occurred in the past. If the loss of Acropora to disease is a new phenomenon, it could be related to accelerating human activity in the Caribbean.