Caribbean mangrove forests act as coral refugia by reducing light stress and increasing coral richness
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Foundation species structure communities by creating habitat and modifying environmental conditions, and there is increasing interest in how foundation species, such as corals and mangroves, interact with one another as these interactions can have cascading effects on diversity and abundance of associated organisms. Given recent reports of corals living on or between mangrove roots under the canopy, we hypothesized that mangroves can serve as a refuge for corals from stresses such as high solar irradiance and temperatures that are associated with the adjacent shallow reef. Using field surveys and a reciprocal transplant experiment, we tested the effects of light and habitat (e.g., reef or mangrove) on coral community structure (i.e., coral species richness, abundance, and diversity) and condition (i.e., level of bleaching, tissue loss, and mortality). The surveys revealed higher coral richness in mangroves than on the adjacent reef, indicating that mangroves can serve as refugia for numerous coral species. Our experimental manipulation of light in mangrove and reef habitats indicated that light intensity is a key environmental parameter mediating coral bleaching and survival, with mangrove habitats providing a refuge from the light stress experienced on nearby shallow reefs. Moreover, our experiment revealed that reef corals bleached less than mangrove corals following transplantation, regardless of whether they were transplanted into mangrove or reef habitats. We suggest that the lower coral richness of the shallow reef is the result of the extreme environmental conditions that select for a subset of coral species able to tolerate these conditions. The facilitative interactions that allow mangroves to act as coral refugia by reducing environmental stress will likely become increasingly important with global climate change.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".