Lorenzo AlvarezFilip

🪸🐟Our new paper is out in @ConLetters this week. In it, we review and discuss in a broader context one of the most fundamental paradigms in reef management and conservation—the parrotfish paradigm: doi.org/10.1111/conl.1… with @ANAMLHZ

🚨 Paper Alert! In 2023, Mexican coral reefs experienced an unprecedented bleaching event But bleaching wasn’t the biggest issue Our study in Proceedings B @RSocPublishing shows a marine heatwave caused massive coral mortality and pushed reefs from production to net erosion 🧵

Please also check out our blog post on our findings here: go.nature.com/4hNnsNi! 🌊

While these signs of recruitment are encouraging, they are not uniformly distributed among all species. Notably, some of the most severely affected corals—such as Dendrogyra cylindrus (pillar coral) and Meandrina meandrites (maze coral)—are showing limited signs of recovery.

👶🪸 Can Caribbean corals recover naturally after the devastating effects of SCTLD? - Our new study in @CommsEarth reveals that corals in their early life stages—either survived the outbreak or recruited afterwards—offering a positive sign of resilience at regional scales

Estudio realizado por integrantes de nuestro Laboratorio.

Parrotfish support healthy coral reefs, but they’re not a cure-all, and sometimes cause harm buff.ly/4bf5iRB

Some arguments to consider moving to Bluesky... nature.com/articles/d4158…

The world’s 10 deadliest climate disasters of the past two decades killed more than half a million people, and a new study by @WWAttribution found global warming fingerprints on all of them, from cyclones and hurricanes, to heatwaves, droughts and floods. insideclimatenews.org/news/31102024/…

🎉 NEW PAPER 🤩 Short and sweet story of how seabird nutrients can increase calcification of several coral genera and thereby boost reef carbonate budgets 🐦↗️🪸 Always fun to work with @cbenkwitt nature.com/articles/s4159… @Marine_Science @ExeterMarine @UniofExeterNews

Online now: Peer review bullying threatens diversity, equity, and inclusion dlvr.it/TFRmw2

Really excited to see this paper published. This was one of Victor’s dissertation chapters. Great job. Proud to be part of this amazing team Spatial variability of sedimentary assemblages reflects variations in bioerosion pressure of adjacent coral reefs journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…

NEW CORAL REEF RESEARCH: Incorporating parrotfish bioerosion into the herbivory paradigm of coral reef resilience (OPEN ACCESS) conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/co… Promoting resilience is highly relevant to preserving biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. For coral reefs, parrotfish protection emerged as a mainstream action for reversing the degradation experienced by these systems. The rationale is that restoring their populations will increase grazing activity and reinforce control of fast-growing macroalgae, facilitating coral cover recovery. A lack of a link between parrotfish trends and macroalgae and coral cover trends at a large scale has, however, often been the case. Suggesting more complex underlying dynamics that should be reexamined. In this review, we discuss how lumping parrotfish species as if they were functionally redundant may obscure trends. And how a lack of appreciation of other functions around the parrotfish paradigm, specifically bioerosion, may have unforeseen and potentially adverse effects on degraded reefs. We show that bioerosion responded more directly and quickly to spatial and temporal changes in parrotfish assemblages than macroalgae consumption, arguably due to the varying vulnerability among Caribbean parrotfishes to fisheries and habitat loss. For highly degraded reefs, positive changes in parrotfish populations could hence compromise the remaining coral skeleton structures and the reef framework, further accentuating reef degradation, where increases in macroalgae consumption could not necessarily compensate for higher rates of bioerosion. #coralreefs #parrotfish #coralreefresearch #reefresilience #bioerosion #coralreefecology #marinescience #marineecology #marinebiology

Overall, we show how lumping parrotfish species as if they were functionally redundant may obscure trends. And how a lack of appreciation of other functions, specifically bioerosion, may have unforeseen and potentially adverse effects on degraded reefs.

This paradigm has led to management regulations worldwide. Yet, there has often been a lack of a link between parrotfish recovery and coral cover increase. This suggests complex dynamics that led us to re-examine this paradigm's theoretical and methodological aspects.

🪸🐟Our new paper is out in @ConLetters this week. In it, we review and discuss in a broader context one of the most fundamental paradigms in reef management and conservation—the parrotfish paradigm: doi.org/10.1111/conl.1… with @ANAMLHZ

❗ Job Opportunity 🐠 Marine Scientist The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute seeks a marine scientist for the position Natural Science, with an interest in tropical research For more information visit: stri.si.edu

From one extreme to the other. Uggggg. Coral restoration is, at best, a feel-good measure – and at worst, a dangerous distraction from climate action. Source: The Conversation search.app/X1D6h9chCQupJS…

Woah! New research shows how vital biodiversity is to thriving humanity: In US counties where bats declined from white-nose syndrome, insect numbers surged, leading to a 31% rise in pesticide use and subsequently *an 8% increase in infant mortality*! #Biodiversity #Conservation