Version 1
: Received: 5 December 2023 / Approved: 6 December 2023 / Online: 6 December 2023 (05:39:26 CET)
How to cite:
Lishchenko, F.; Burmistrova, Y.; Petrochenko, R.; Nguen, T.; Britayev, T. Seasonal Bleaching and Partial Mortality of Pocillopora verrucosa Corals off the Coast of Central Vietnam. Preprints2023, 2023120319. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.0319.v1
Lishchenko, F.; Burmistrova, Y.; Petrochenko, R.; Nguen, T.; Britayev, T. Seasonal Bleaching and Partial Mortality of Pocillopora verrucosa Corals off the Coast of Central Vietnam. Preprints 2023, 2023120319. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.0319.v1
Lishchenko, F.; Burmistrova, Y.; Petrochenko, R.; Nguen, T.; Britayev, T. Seasonal Bleaching and Partial Mortality of Pocillopora verrucosa Corals off the Coast of Central Vietnam. Preprints2023, 2023120319. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.0319.v1
APA Style
Lishchenko, F., Burmistrova, Y., Petrochenko, R., Nguen, T., & Britayev, T. (2023). Seasonal Bleaching and Partial Mortality of <em>Pocillopora verrucosa</em> Corals off the Coast of Central Vietnam. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.0319.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Lishchenko, F., Thanh Nguen and Temir Britayev. 2023 "Seasonal Bleaching and Partial Mortality of <em>Pocillopora verrucosa</em> Corals off the Coast of Central Vietnam" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.0319.v1
Abstract
Coral reefs are one of the most productive yet vulnerable ecosystems on Earth. An important step in understanding the functioning of coral communities is studying the environmental impact on the state of reefs. The present study aimed to assess the impacts of the water temperature, precipitation, wave action and population density on the seasonal bleaching, partial and complete mortality of shallow-water branching corals of Pocillopora verrucosa species complex. The present study was conducted at the Dam Bay research station (Nha Trang Bay) from 26 April 2020 to 2 April 2021. Throughout the study the percentage of bleached coral colonies varied from 1 to 41.5% with two peaks, in autumn (October) and spring (April). Rates of the development of partial mortality varied from 0 to 10%, with a pronounced peak in December. At the end of the experiment, the percentage of coral colonies suffering from partial mortality reached 47%. Only 4,5% of experimental colonies died by the end of the study. Analysis revealed that water temperature and partial mortality are the drivers of bleaching, while wave action, temperature and bleaching are the factors with a significant impact on partial mortality. In the present study, the main cause of coral death was the development of algal fouling at the sites of colony lesions, which gradually spread over the entire surface of the colony. We showed also that the impact of individual stress on mortality prevailed over the impact of seasonal bleaching and partial mortality events.
Keywords
branching corals; bleaching; mortality; temperature stress; turbidity; density; wave action
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
