[Coral-List] Disruptive science?

[Douglas Fenner]

      For discoveries (as opposed to theories, discoveries that I'd argue
were as disruptive as some theories), the discovery that coral reefs were
degrading.  The discovery that remote, near-pristine reefs had amazing
numbers of big reef fish, particularly sharks (and thus that our view of
natural reefs was very wrong because of shifting baselines).  The discovery
of huge outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish that were eating all the
corals on some reefs.  The discovery of hot water events that were causing
mass bleaching and sometimes mass mortality of up to 90% of all the
corals.  The discovery of some reefs recovering coral cover within 10 years
or so while other reefs go on and on without recovering.  The discovery
that white band disease in the western Atlantic had killed most of two of
the 3 dominant corals there before almost anyone realized what had
happened.  The discovery of a mass mortality that swept through the entire
Caribbean in one year, killing a sea urchin that was super common in
shallow water.

On Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 2:11 AM Ogden, John via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Thanks to John W for this intriguing question.  Three things come
> immediately to mind: (1) Odum and Odum's (1966) paper on measuring the
> metabolism of an in situ reef at Enewetak; (2) the many studies showing
> the role of herbivores in coral reef ecology; (3) the demonstration of
> the role of "top down" control of coral reef communities by predators.
> JO
>
> On 4/24/2019 10:56 AM, John Ware via Coral-List wrote:
> > Dear List,
> >
> > I recently read the following paper in Nature:
> >
> > /Wu L, Wang D, Evans JA (2019) Large teams develop and small teams
> > disrupt science and technology. Nature 566:378-382/ I began to think
> > back on my (limited) involvement with coral reef science. Realizing
> > that 'disruptive' is a good thing, what ideas have been 'disruptive'?
> > The two that came immediately to mind were Peter Sale's 'lottery
> >  hypothesis' (Proc. 2nd Coral Reef Symposium: 1974) and Buddemeier and
> > Fautin's Adaptive Bleaching Hypothesis (BioScience 1993). I am
> > curious: What other big ones did I miss? John
> >
>
> --
>
> -----
>
> John C. Ogden, Ph.D.
> Professor Emeritus, Integrative Biology
> 190 18th Avenue North
> St. Petersburg, FL 33704 USA
> Cell: 727-641-4673
> Email: jogden at usf.edu
> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Ogden3
> http://biology.usf.edu/ib/faculty/jogden/
>
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-- 
Douglas Fenner
Ocean Associates, Inc. Contractor
NOAA Fisheries Service
Pacific Islands Regional Office
Honolulu
and:
Consultant
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

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