2025/06/06 by Noam Vogt-Vincent, James M. Pringle, Christopher E. Cornwall +1 · 1 voice · 4 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Biodiversity #Biology #Climate change #Coral #Coral and Marine Ecosystems Studies #Coral bleaching #Coral reef #Ecology #Environmental science #Geology #Marine and coastal plant biology #Marine and fisheries research #Oceanography #Range (aeronautics) #Reef #Resilience of coral reefs
paper · doi:10.1126/sciadv.adr2545
published in Science Advances 11(23), eadr2545 (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
openalex publication_date 2025/06/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/23
Past coral range expansions suggest that high-latitude environments may serve as refugia, potentially buffering coral biodiversity loss due to climate change. We explore this possibility for corals globally, using a dynamic metacommunity model incorporating temperature, photosynthetically available radiation, pH, and four distinct, interacting coral assemblages. This model reasonably reproduces the observed distribution and recent decline of corals across the Indo-Pacific and Caribbean. Our simulations suggest that there is a mismatch between the timescales of coral reef decline and range expansion under future predicted climate change. Whereas the most severe declines in coral cover will likely occur within 40 to 80 years, large-scale coral reef expansion requires centuries. The absence of large-scale coral refugia in the face of rapid anthropogenic climate change emphasizes the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate nonthermal stressors for corals, both in the tropics and in higher latitudes.