SEMINAR: MBF602 Brittany Huntington Friday 3-11-11, 1 pm S/A 103

["Brittany Huntington" <bhuntington@rsmas.miami.edu>]

How the size, isolation, and complexity of reefs influences coral
diversity across the seascape

Understanding how organisms perceive and respond to landscape
heterogeneity and connectivity is essential for effective conservation and
management.   The need for such understanding in coral populations is
particularly urgent given the global declines of corals in recent decades.
 Yet only a handful of studies have investigated patterns in coral
diversity and abundance across heterogeneous landscapes.  Here, I
demonstrate how a large artificial reef array can overcome many of the
logistical difficulties of assessing landscape patterns of coral
composition.   Specifically, I quantified coral populations on artificial
reefs of varying size, spatial configuration (isolation), and substrate
complexity.  Each of these spatial and physical attributes has been shown
to drive patterns in organism diversity in terrestrial and marine systems,
but remain collectively untested for reef-building corals.  Larger reefs
were found to support greater coral diversity in accordance with passive
sampling hypothesis; larger reefs support greater densities of corals and
thereby more species.  Coral diversity was unaffected by reef complexity.
Similarly, coral diversity was unaffected by isolation distance, though
colony densities for brooding species did exhibit a significant positive
relationship with increasing connectivity among reefs.


Brittany Huntington

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), B.S. Marine Biology, 2002
San Francisco State University, M.S. Marine Science, 2006
Entered PhD program: Fall 2007
Advisor: Dr. Diego Lirman





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