Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

7700-Year Persistence of an Isolated, Free-Living Coral Assemblage in the Galapagos Islands: A Model for Coral Refugia?

ORCID

0000-0001-8053-2389, 0000-0002-6003-9324

ResearcherID

F-8807-2011

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Coral Reefs

ISSN

0722-4028

Publication Date

4-30-2020

Keywords

Eastern tropical Pacific, Galapagos, El Nino-Southern Oscillation, ENSO, Paleoecology, Psammocora stellata, Cycloseris (Diaseris) distorta, Sediment core

Abstract

In an eastern-Pacific coral assemblage at Devil’s Crown, Galápagos Islands, Ecuador, two coral species, Psammocora stellata and Cycloseris (Diaseris) distorta, form dense populations of unattached colonies on sand and rubble substrata. In the Galápagos, living C. (D.) distorta is found only at this single site, whereas populations of P. stellata are found throughout the Archipelago. Six cores dating to ~ 7700 yBP showed P. stellata to be dominant throughout the history of this isolated community, but C. (D.) distorta increased in abundance from ~ 2200 yBP and reached peak abundance between 1471 yBP and the present. The relative frequency of the two coral species may be linked to millennial-scale climatic variability, and this site may represent a refuge for C. (D.) distorta from unfavorable climatic fluctuations on millennial timescales. Our results demonstrate that some corals can persist in isolated populations for millennia.

DOI

10.1007/s00338-020-01935-5

First Page

1

Last Page

9

Comments

©Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

Additional Comments

NSF grant #s: OCE-9018392, OCE-9218197, OCE1535007

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