Stability of Reef-Coral Assemblages in the Quaternary (original) (raw)

Coral Reefs of the World, 2016

Abstract

At small spatial and temporal scales reefs are non-equilibrial, dynamic, disturbance-dominated ecosystems. At larger scales, however, the community structure of coral reefs appears stable; coral assemblages from the same environments exhibit striking similarities in species composition and dominance on time scales of decades to hundreds of thousands years. Thus, community membership over time is commonly more stable and persistent than that expected by chance alone. In both the Caribbean and Indo-Pacific, patterns of zonation observed on modern reefs are faithfully recorded in fossil reef sequences preserved through successive Pleistocene high-stands of sea level. Many paleoecologists, however, view the changes in both sea level and sea-surface temperature (SST) recorded during Pleistocene glaciations as major disturbance events requiring community reassembly de novo after each event. Why did reef communities respond in a repetitive fashion to the frequent and supposedly large environmental fluctuations of the Ice Ages?

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