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RODRÍGUEZ MARTÍNEZ ROSA ELISA

Tipo de artículo

Revistas indexadas

Título de artículo

Controls on Coral-Ground Development along the Northern Mesoamerican Reef Tract

Volúmen

6

Número de registro

NA

Campo

CIENCIAS DE LA TIERRA Y EL COSMOS

Disciplina

OTRAS ESPECIALIDADES EN MATERIA DE CIENCIAS DE LA TIERRA DEL COSMOS Y DEL MEDIO AMBIENTE

Subdisciplina

Resumen

Coral-grounds are reef communities that colonize rocky substratum but do not form framework or three-dimensional reef structures. To investigate why, we used video transects and underwater photography to determine the composition, structure and status of a coral-ground community located on the edge of a rocky terrace in front of a tourist park, Xcaret, in the northern Mesoamerican Reef tract, Mexico. The community has a relatively low coral, gorgonian and sponge cover (,10%) and high algal cover (.40%). We recorded 23 species of Scleractinia, 14 species of Gorgonacea and 30 species of Porifera. The coral community is diverse but lacks large coral colonies, being dominated instead by small, sediment-tolerant, and brooding species. In these small colonies, the abundance of potentially lethal interactions and partial mortality is high but decreases when colonies are larger than 40 cm. Such characteristics are consistent with an environment control whereby storm waves periodically remove larger colonies and elevate sediment flux. The community only survives these storm conditions due to its slope-break location, which ensures lack of burial and continued local recruitment. A comparison with similar coral-ground communities in adjacent areas suggests that the narrow width of the rock terrace hinders sediment stabilization, thereby ensuring that communities cannot escape bottom effects and develop into threedimensional reef structures on geological time scales.

URL (DOI, ORCID, HANDLE, enlace)

Fuente

Sistema Estatal de Información y Documentación Científica y Tecnológica

Número de Visitas

3