Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Contemporary white-band disease in Caribbean corals driven by climate change

Abstract

Over the past 40 years, two of the dominant reef-building corals in the Caribbean, Acropora palmata and Acropora cervicornis, have experienced unprecedented declines1,2. That loss has been largely attributed to a syndrome commonly referred to as white-band disease1,3. Climate change-driven increases in sea surface temperature (SST) have been linked to several coral diseases4,5, yet, despite decades of research, the attribution of white-band disease to climate change remains unknown. Here we hindcasted the potential relationship between recent ocean warming and outbreaks of white-band disease on acroporid corals. We quantified eight SST metrics, including rates of change in SST and contemporary thermal anomalies, and compared them with records of white-band disease on A. palmata and A. cervicornis from 473 sites across the Caribbean, surveyed from 1997 to 2004. The results of our models suggest that decades-long climate-driven changes in SST, increases in thermal minima, and the breach of thermal maxima have all played significant roles in the spread of white-band disease. We conclude that white-band disease has been strongly coupled with thermal stresses associated with climate change, which has contributed to the regional decline of these once-dominant reef-building corals.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Caribbean white-band disease on Acropora species.
Figure 2: Caribbean SSTs.
Figure 3: Partial dependency plots.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Aronson, R. B. & Precht, W. F. White-band disease and the changing face of Caribbean coral reefs. Hydrobiologia 460, 25–38 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Pandolfi, J. Coral community dynamics at multiple scales. Coral Reefs 21, 13–23 (2002).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Antonius, A. Proc 4th Int. Coral Reef Symp. Vol. 2, 7–14 (Marine Sciences Center, University of the Philippines, 1981).

    Google Scholar 

  4. Selig, E. R. et al. Coral Reefs and Climate Change: Science and Management 111–128 (American Geophysical Union, 2006).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  5. Ruiz-Moreno, D. et al. Global coral disease prevalence associated with sea temperature anomalies and local factors. Dis. Aquat. Organ. 100, 249–261 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Budd, A. F., Stemann, T. A. & Stewart, R. H. Eocene Caribbean reef corals: A unique fauna from the Gatuncillo Formation of Panama. J. Paleontol. 66(4), 570–594 (1992).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Zachos, J. C., Dickens, G. R. & Zeebe, R. E. An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics. Nature 451, 279–283 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Aronson, R., Bruckner, A., Moore, J., Precht, B. & Weil, E. Acropora palmata The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2014.2. (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 2008); http://www.iucnredlist.org

  9. Hogarth, W. T. Endangered and threatened species: Final listing determinations for elkhorn and staghorn coral. Fed. Reg. 71, 26852–26861 (2006).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Randall, C. J., Jordan-Garza, A. G., Muller, E. & vanWoesik, R. Relationships between the history of thermal stress and the relative risk of Caribbean corals. Ecology 95, 1981–1994 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Ritchie, K. B. & Smith, G. W. Type II white-band disease. Rev. Biol. Trop. 46, 199–203 (1998).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Pantos, O. & Bythell, J. C. Bacterial community structure associated with white band disease in the elkhorn coral Acropora palmata determined using culture-independent 16S rRNA techniques. Dis. Aquat. Organ. 69, 79–88 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Sweet, M. J., Croquer, A. & Bythell, J. C. Experimental antibiotic treatment identifies potential pathogens of white band disease in the endangered Caribbean coral Acropora cervicornis. Proc. R. Soc. B 281, 20140094 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Lentz, J. A., Blackburn, J. K. & Curtis, A. J. Evaluating patterns of a white-band disease (WBD) outbreak in Acropora palmata using spatial analysis: A comparison of transect and colony clustering. PLoS ONE 6, e21830 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Rosenberg, E., Koren, O., Reshef, L., Efrony, R. & Zilber-Rosenberg, I. The role of microorganisms in coral health, disease and evolution. Nature Rev. Microbiol. 5, 355–362 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Lesser, M. P., Bythell, J. C., Gates, R. D., Johnstone, R. W. & Hoegh-Guldberg, O. Are infectious diseases really killing corals? Alternative interpretations of the experimental and ecological data. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. 346, 36–44 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Muller, E. M. & van Woesik, R. Caribbean coral diseases: Primary transmission or secondary infection? Glob. Change Biol. 18, 3529–3535 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Miller, J. et al. Coral disease following massive bleaching in 2005 causes 60% decline in coral cover on reefs in the US Virgin Islands. Coral Reefs 28, 925–937 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Howells, E. J. et al. Coral thermal tolerance shaped by local adaptation of photosymbionts. Nature Clim. Change 2, 116–120 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Nakamura, T. & vanWoesik, R. Water-flow rates and passive diffusion partially explain differential survival of corals during the 1998 bleaching event. Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser. 212, 301–304 (2001).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Harvell, C. D. et al. Climate warming and disease risk for terrestrial and marine biota. Science 296, 2158–2162 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Gladfelter, W. B. White-band disease in Acropora palmata: Implications for the structure and growth of shallow reefs. Bull. Mar. Sci. 32, 639–643 (1982).

    Google Scholar 

  23. Bopp, L. et al. Multiple stressors of ocean ecosystems in the 21st century: Projections with CMIP5 models. Biogeosciences 10, 6225–6245 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Rayner, N. A. et al. Global analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice, and night marine air temperature since the late nineteenth century. J. Geophys. Res. 108 D14, 4407 (2003).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Casey, K. S., Brandon, T. B., Cornillon, P. & Evans, R. in Oceanography from Space: Revisited (eds Barale, V., Gower, J. F. R. & Alberotanza, L.) 323–341 (Springer, 2010).

    Google Scholar 

  26. Dormann, C. F. et al. Collinearity: A review of methods to deal with it and a simulation study evaluating their performance. Ecography 36, 027–046 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. De’ath, G. Boosted trees for ecological modeling and prediction. Ecology 88, 243–251 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Elith, J., Leathwick, J. R. & Hastie, T. A working guide to boosted regression trees. J. Animal Ecol. 77, 802–813 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  29. Ridgeway, G. Generalized Boosted Regression Models Version. 1. Doc. R Package ‘gbm’ Vol. 7 (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, 2006); http://cran.fiocruz.br/web/packages/gbm/gbm.pdf

    Google Scholar 

  30. R Core Team, R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, 2014); http://www.R-project.org

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment Program for training volunteers, conducting surveys, and making data freely available for use, especially R. Ginsburg, J. Lang and P. Kramer. Thanks also to S. J. van Woesik and J. E. Speaks for editorial comments, to C. Cacciapaglia for assistance with coding, to R. Aronson for valuable discussions, and to A. G. Jordán-Garza for providing a photograph of A. cervicornis. We acknowledge NSF OCE-1219804, awarded to R.v.W., for funding. This paper is Contribution No. 126 from the Institute for Research on Global Climate Change at the Florida Institute of Technology.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

C.J.R. and R.v.W. conceived and designed the experiments; C.J.R. performed the experiments, coded the models and analysed the data; both authors wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to C. J. Randall.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Randall, C., van Woesik, R. Contemporary white-band disease in Caribbean corals driven by climate change. Nature Clim Change 5, 375–379 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2530

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2530

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing