[Coral-List] Invitation for abstracts - ICRS 2020: How will the coral populations of today affect the ecology and recovery of coral reefs in the future?

[Kelly Speare]

Dear Coral-List,

Abstract submissions for ICRS 2020 in Bremen, Germany are now open. Aaron Hartmann, Kristen Marhaver, and I are organizing a session entitled “How will the coral populations of today affect the ecology and recovery of coral reefs in the future?” We aim for this to be a highly interdisciplinary session, and we invite you to submit abstracts that address this question from empirical, theoretical, and applied approaches. 

This session will be hosted under Theme 2 and abstract submissions are due by September 1, 2019. http://www.icrs2020.de/program/session-program/#c234

Session Description:

Anthropocene coral reefs have undergone massive changes in coral abundance and community composition, motivating ecologists to predict potential trajectories for recovery and factors that could thwart recovery. A growing body of work has identified important pathways by which corals, and the conditions they experience, influence future generations of corals and the assembly of ecosystems around them. For example, corals in denser populations produce disproportionally more larvae than corals in diffuse populations, and environmental conditions can influence the quantity and quality of coral offspring via maternal effects. Transgenerational effects can further influence coral offspring through adaptation (genetic) or acclimatization (epigenetic, microbial, or viral) to environmental change. In degraded systems, relatively weedy coral species are necessary to facilitate natural recruitment and outplant survival of more fragile species. While reefs were once thought to undergo a small number of predictable phase shifts, new datasets reveal complex path dependencies that affect community assemblage on a site-by-site basis. Finally, the re-establishment of coral populations in heavily degraded sites has produced so-called "novel ecosystems" made up of non-traditional, yet ecologically functional, species assemblages. What will coral reefs look like in the next 100 years? How will today's remnant, resilient, and recovering reefs influence these trajectories? This session will bring together ideas from across disciplines to ask the broad question: How are the corals of today influencing the coral reefs of the future? We invite contributions that address this question at all levels, from individual corals, to populations, communities, and ecosystems. This session aims to be highly interdisciplinary, bringing together work from empirical, theoretical, and applied approaches from any reef system.

Please contact me directly with any questions.

Cheers,
Kelly

Kelly Speare
PhD Candidate
Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology
University of California, Santa Barbara