Using demographic models to project the effects of climate change on scleractinian corals: Pocillopora damicornis as a case study

• Published in: Coral reefs Vol. 34; no. 2; pp. 505 - 515
• Main Authors: Bramanti, L., Iannelli, M., Fan, T. Y., Edmunds, P. J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-06-2015; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Acidification; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Climate change; Climate effects; Coral reefs; Freshwater & Marine Ecology; Global climate; High temperature; Larvae; Life history; Life Sciences; Marine biology; Marine ecology; Metapopulations; Ocean acidification; Oceanography; Pocillopora damicornis; Population dynamics; Population structure; Scleractinia; ISEW, Taiwan; Coral reefs; Climate change; Demographic models; Population dynamics; Ocean acidification
• ISSN: 0722-4028; 1432-0975
• DOI: 10.1007/s00338-015-1269-z

Using empirical analyses of the effects of global climate change (GCC) and ocean acidification (OA) on the survival and calcification of early life stages of
Pocillopora damicornis
, we employed a demographic approach to forecast the consequences of GCC and OA on the population dynamics of this coral. We constructed a size-based demographic model using life-history tables and transition probabilities for a population in Southern Taiwan, and projected the population structure over ~100 yr under scenarios of warming and acidification. The simulations incorporated stochastic variability of the parameters (±5 %), decline in larval survival due to increases in temperature and pCO
2
, modified growth rates due to rising temperature, and larval input from distant populations. In a closed population, an increase of pCO
2
from 40.5 to 91.2 Pa reduces density, and an increase in temperature from 26 to 29 °C results in population extirpation within 100 yr. With a larval supply of 10 % from distant populations, the population persisted regardless of high temperature (+3 °C). These results indicate that: (1) populations of
P. damicornis
may be resistant to GCC and OA so long as it persists as part of a metapopulation capable of supplying larvae from spatially separated populations and (2) early life stages can regulate the population dynamics of
P. damicornis
.