Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 107, Issue 21, Pages 9683-9688Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0912095107
Keywords
allelopathy; competition; coral-seaweed-herbivore interactions; marine chemical ecology; marine protected area
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [DGE 0114400, OCE 0929119]
- National Institutes of Health [U01 TW007401-01]
- Teasley Endowment
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Division Of Ocean Sciences [0929119] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Coral reefs are in dramatic global decline, with seaweeds commonly replacing corals. It is unclear, however, whether seaweeds harm corals directly or colonize opportunistically following their decline and then suppress coral recruitment. In the Caribbean and tropical Pacific, we show that, when protected from herbivores, similar to 40 to 70% of common seaweeds cause bleaching and death of coral tissue when in direct contact. For seaweeds that harmed coral tissues, their lipid-soluble extracts also produced rapid bleaching. Coral bleaching and mortality was limited to areas of direct contact with seaweeds or their extracts. These patterns suggest that allelopathic seaweed-coral interactions can be important on reefs lacking herbivore control of seaweeds, and that these interactions involve lipid-soluble metabolites transferred via direct contact. Seaweeds were rapidly consumed when placed on a Pacific reef protected from fishing but were left intact or consumed at slower rates on an adjacent fished reef, indicating that herbivory will suppress seaweeds and lower frequency of allelopathic damage to corals if reefs retain intact food webs. With continued removal of herbivores from coral reefs, seaweeds are becoming more common. This occurrence will lead to increasing frequency of seaweed-coral contacts, increasing allelopathic suppression of remaining corals, and continuing decline of reef corals.
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