[Coral-List] [External Email] Re: New Paper: Resilient corals in the Phoenix Islands

[Lescinsky, Halard]

David:  Can you please explain what you mean by the natural life cycle of a reef and particularly its senescence and terminal stage?  Even reefs that reach sea-level and have no accommodation space for upward accretion can have high coral cover (though this is presumably removed periodically by storms, allowing for new growth).  And while reef flats may have no accommodation space left for upward accretion, corals in adjacent deeper waters certainly do and the seaward progradation of reefs is normal.  It seems like attributing the loss of corals and reefs to natural senescence sounds dangerously similar to other discarded theories of evolution that are best forgotten.

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From: Coral-List <coral-list-bounces at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> on behalf of David Blakeway via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2021 2:51 AM
To: coral list <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Subject: [External Email] Re: [Coral-List] New Paper: Resilient corals in the Phoenix Islands

In assessing these reefs I think it's worth considering where they're at in
terms of their natural life cycle. Kiribati, for example, looks pretty
terminal to me. You could imagine that 1000 years ago it might have
resembled Tabueran (3.86, -159.32) and 1000 years from now it might look
like Washington Island (4.68, -160.38). That process (losing all lagoon
corals) is completely natural. And probably wouldn't be a gradual
incremental process (on our timescale); more likely the lagoon coral
community would undergo massive fluctuations in the terminal stage, while
heading toward long-term senescence. I agree that preserving Kiribati
corals is critical insurance. My point is just that--for reefs in
general--we shouldn't expect good stable coral cover and diversity in
late-stage reefs approaching sea level.
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