The demographics of a 15-year decline in cover of the caribbean reef coral Montastraea annularis

On Caribbean reefs, a striking trend of the last 25 years has been the decline in cover of the framework-building coral Montastraea annularis, a species that has dominated reefs throughout the region for millennia. Clearly, such losses are important ecologically, but to evaluate their significance fully, they need to be placed in the context of the proximal causes and balanced against the potential for gains in cover through growth and recruitment. In this study, a population of M. annularis in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, was censused annually from 1988 to 2003 to quantify coral cover and construct a size-based demographic model. The model was developed to explore the mechanisms of change in coral cover and to ascertain likely trajectories for future population growth. Over the study period, the cover of M. annularis declined from 41% in 1988, to 12% by 1999 (a 72% decline) but remained unchanged statistically for the last five years of the study. Between 1988 and 2003, colony abundances declined by 57...

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