[Coral-List] Source for "coral occupy <1% of the seafloor but house more than 25% of species"

Hanny Rivera hrivera28 at gmail.com
Tue Dec 15 18:45:31 UTC 2020


Hi Dr. Obura,

I opted for a sentence very similar in spirit but with referenced numbers: "
While comprising only a small fraction of seafloor (0.2%) (Smith 1978),
coral reefs are home to an estimated 830,000 species of organisms (Fisher
et al. 2015)."

If you or anyone else is curious about the piece, you can find the full
article here:
https://sciencepolicyreview.org/2020/08/coral-reefs-are-critical-for-our-food-supply-tourism-and-ocean-health-we-can-protect-them-from-climate-change/

I had actually meant to advertise it to this list a while ago and didn't
get around to it. It's an overview of coral/reef focused policy and
management efforts with some general policy recommendations.
Would love to hear any feedback from the community on it! Andrea Chan and
Victoria Luu (both Knauss Policy fellows were co-authors).

Best,
Hanny


On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 10:25 PM Hanny Rivera <hrivera28 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all!
>
> A while back, I had written asking for help tracking down the source for
> this statement. Thank you to all who responded and helped! There were a
> number of folks who also asked me to let them know what I found. Sorry for
> the long delay! A recent twitter post reminded me I hadn't followed up.
>
> Anyways: The original reference (at least the most original that I could
> find) is McAllister 1991. I had to do a lot of digging to find the actual
> paper, though I finally came across it here:
> https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ptid=uc1.31822009136755&view=1up&seq=22
> As you might see, it's not entirely clear where the numbers come from
> though.
>
> Dan Barshis
> had pointed me to Smith 1978 (https://www.nature.com/articles/273225a0) as
> a more viable source for the area estimation (though it's a bit outdated) and
> Fisher et al 2015 (
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214016236) as a
> reference for species richness on reefs.
>
> A more recent area estimate is Spalding et al. 2001 (
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X17300635)
> which was pointed out to me by Dennis Allemand
>
> Dennis Allemand also has several other references for species #s that live
> on reefs in his paper (
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352485518305978?via%3Dihub)
> on page 2.
>
> Thanks again all! Hope this is helpful for folks going forward.
>
> Best, Hanny
>
> --
> Hanny E. Rivera, Ph.D.
> Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer
> Boston University, Biology Department
> Davies Marine Population Genomics Lab
> https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannyrivera
> http://sites.bu.edu/davieslab/members/
>


-- 
Hanny E. Rivera, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer
Boston University, Biology Department
Davies Marine Population Genomics Lab
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannyrivera
http://sites.bu.edu/davieslab/members/


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