Heatwave impacts on soft corals

Soft corals (order Alcyonacea) provide reef structure and habitat, but most coral reef research focuses instead on reef-building hard corals (order Scleractinia). In a new study led by former MSc student Dominique Maucieri, we examined >6000 images of Kiritimati’s Reefs collected on 16 expeditions between 2007 and 2019, and documented a complete loss of soft coral during the 2015/2016 El Niño. Photos of individual colonies tracked over time revealed that soft coral structures can persist for several years post-mortality, and that hard corals can recruit onto these structures. Our study exposes the extreme vulnerability of soft corals to heat stress, which has received scant previous documentation.

Key Publication: Maucieri, D. and J.K. Baum. 2021. Impacts of heat stress on soft corals, an overlooked and highly vulnerable component of coral reef ecosystems, at a central equatorial Pacific atoll. Biological Conservation 262:109328.