Evidence for delayed mortality in hurricane-damaged Jamaican staghorn corals

Abstract

Severe tropical storms can cause widespread mortality in reef corals^1,2. The Caribbean staghorn coral, Acropora cervicornis, although dependent on fragmentation for asexual propagation^3–5, is particularly vulnerable to hurricane damage^6,7. The most important agents of post-hurricane mortality are assumed to be high wave energy⁶ and change in salinity⁸, factors which typically soon diminish in intensity. We report here that there was substantial delayed tissue and colony death in A. cervicornis on a Jamaican reef damaged by Hurricane Alien. This previously undocumented degree of secondary mortality, sustained for 5 months and unrelated to emersion⁹, was over one order of magnitude more severe than that caused by the immediate effects of the storm. The elimination of >98% of the original survivors suggests potentially complex responses to catastrophes, involving disease^10,11 and predation, which may explain the widely variable rates of reef recovery previously reported^12–15.