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Estimating the potential for coral adaptation to global warming across the Indo-West Pacific
journal contribution
posted on 2020-06-01, 00:00 authored by M V Matz, Eric TremlEric Treml, B C Haller© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd The potential of reef-building corals to adapt to increasing sea-surface temperatures is often debated but has rarely been comprehensively modeled on a region-wide scale. We used individual-based simulations to model adaptation to warming in a coral metapopulation comprising 680 reefs and representing the whole of the Central Indo-West Pacific. Encouragingly, some reefs—most notably Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, New Caledonia and the southern half of the Great Barrier Reef—exhibited high capacity for adaptation and, in our model, maintained coral cover even under a rapid “business-as-usual” warming scenario throughout the modeled period (200 years). Higher resilience of these reefs was observed under all tested parameter settings except the models prohibiting selection and/or migration during warming. At the same time, the majority of reefs in the region tended to collapse within the first 100 years of warming. The adaptive potential (odds of maintaining high coral cover) of a given reef could be predicted based on two metrics: the reef's present-day temperature, and the proportion of recruits immigrating from warmer locations. The latter metric explains the most variation in adaptive potential, and significantly correlates with actual coral cover changes observed throughout the region between the 1970s and the early 2000s. These findings will help prioritize coral conservation efforts and plan assisted gene flow interventions to boost the adaptive potential of specific coral populations.
History
Journal
Global Change BiologyVolume
26Issue
6Pagination
3473 - 3481Publisher
WileyLocation
London, EnglandPublisher DOI
Link to full text
ISSN
1354-1013eISSN
1365-2486Language
EnglishPublication classification
C Journal article; C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journalUsage metrics
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Keywords
AdaptationAssisted gene flowClimate changeIndividual-based modelingMetapopulationScience & TechnologyLife Sciences & BiomedicineBiodiversity ConservationEcologyEnvironmental SciencesBiodiversity & ConservationEnvironmental Sciences & EcologyCLIMATE-CHANGEGENE FLOWHEAT TOLERANCEREEFCONNECTIVITYDISPERSALRESPONSESFUTURELARVAECOVEREcology
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