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Nutrient enrichment can increase the severity of coral diseases
Abstract
The prevalence and severity of marine diseases have increased over the last 20 years, significantly impacting a variety of foundation and keystone species. One explanation is that changes in the environment caused by human activities have impaired host resistance and/or have increased pathogen virulence. Here, we report evidence from field experiments that nutrient enrichment can significantly increase the severity of two important Caribbean coral epizootics: aspergillosis of the common gorgonian sea fan Gorgonia ventalina and yellow band disease of the reef‐building corals Montastraea annularis and M. franksii. Experimentally increasing nutrient concentrations by 2–5× nearly doubled host tissue loss caused by yellow band disease. In a separate experiment, nutrient enrichment significantly increased two measures of sea fan aspergillosis severity. Our results may help explain the conspicuous patchiness of coral disease severity, besides suggesting that minimizing nutrient pollution could be an important management tool for controlling coral epizootics.
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Citations
Cited by
Caribbean Corals in Crisis: Record Thermal Stress, Bleaching, and Mortality in 2005
Eakin, C. M., Morgan, J. A., Heron, S. F., Smith, T. B., Liu, G., Alvarez-Filip, L., Baca, B., Bartels, E., Bastidas, C., Bouchon, C., et al. (2010) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013969 · Cited by 915
Thermal Stress and Coral Cover as Drivers of Coral Disease Outbreaks
Bruno, J. F., Selig, E. R., Casey, K. S., Page, C. A., Willis, B. L., Harvell, C. D., Sweatman, H., & Melendy, A. M. (2007) · PLoS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050124 · Cited by 873
Self-citationBeneficial Microorganisms for Corals (BMC): Proposed Mechanisms for Coral Health and Resilience
Peixoto, R. S., Rosado, P. M., Leite, D. C. D. A., Rosado, A. S., & Bourne, D. G. (2017) · Frontiers in Microbiology · doi:10.3389/fmicb.2017.00341 · Cited by 594
Global Marine Biodiversity Trends
Sala, E., & Knowlton, N. (2006) · Annual Review of Environment and Resources · doi:10.1146/annurev.energy.31.020105.100235 · Cited by 394
The rising tide of ocean diseases: unsolved problems and research priorities
Harvell, D., Aronson, R., Baron, N., Connell, J., Dobson, A., Ellner, S., Gerber, L., Kim, K., Kuris, A., McCallum, H., et al. (2004) · Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · doi:10.1890/1540-9295(2004)002[0375:trtood]2.0.co;2 · Cited by 310
Metadata
- Authors
- Bruno, J. F., Petes, L. E., Drew Harvell, C., & Hettinger, A.
- Venue
- Ecology Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2003-11-24
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1056-1061
- ISSN
- 1461-023X (ISSN-L)
- 1461-0248
- OpenAlex
- W2120391274
- Cited by
- 605
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 12.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Bruno, J. F., Petes, L. E., Drew Harvell, C., & Hettinger, A. (2003). Nutrient enrichment can increase the severity of coral diseases. Ecology Letters. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1461-0248.2003.00544.x
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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