Paper Reviewed
Nelson, H.R., Kuempel, C.D. and Altieri, A.H. 2016. The resilience of reef invertebrate biodiversity to coral mortality. Ecosphere 7: e139.

In their recent Ecosphere paper, Nelson et al. (2016) write that what they call foundation species "provide many important ecosystem functions including the provision of habitat for diverse communities." However, they go on to say that in the case of corals, which create reef habitats that are "hotspots for biodiversity," the periodic degradation and mortality of corals might possibly "have the potential to compromise these roles."

To learn more about this concern, the three researchers went on to "examine the resilience of invertebrate abundance and biodiversity on reefs following a recent coral mass mortality event on the Caribbean coast of Panama." These efforts revealed that (1) "dead coral habitats support invertebrate assemblages that can be more diverse and abundant than live coral habitats," and that (2) "coral habitat (whether live or dead) in turn supports higher diversity and abundance than structurally simple sand areas without coral."

In light of these observable facts, Nelsen et al. consequently conclude that (3) "the biodiversity-sustaining function of reefs has the potential to persist following coral disturbance at the scale of entire reefs," which also leads them to conclude that (4) "some metrics of community structure are therefore resilient to events of foundation species mortality."