“This may be a sign that coral reefs will never be the
same again, and that we should be planning for an un-
stable, uncertain future.”
Bellwood says, “Few if any disappeared, but many are
exceedingly rare in our sampling area. We have not lost
species but have tracked a major change in composition.
The equivalent of your house pets (cats, dogs, fish) being
replaced by rats, mice, and cockroaches—you still have
animals in the house just not the same sort.”
The successful invaders include Chinese Damsel
(Neopomacentrus bankieri), crypto-benthic gobies in the
Genus Istigobius, and the Queensland Pygmy Goby (Evi-
ota queenslandica). These two species showed increases of
138% and 247%, respectively.
Bellwood says it is not yet possible to diagnose the
precise reasons for the loss of the gobies, but suspects
that reproductive success has diminished because of unknown and difficult to measure chemical changes in the
reef itself.
ABSENCE OF GENETIC SETTLEMENT CUES
FOR LARVAE?
“I suspect a comparable, but unrecorded, change in the
benthic composition has changed the settlement cues
and made the reef less attractive to the larvae of the original inhabitants. The larvae of the species in the original
community are still not coming back in their original
numbers.” (Editor: A settlement cue is a
signal to a drifting larval fish that this is
“home” and a good place to drop down
out of the water column. Settlement cues
for larval marine organisms are given off
by coral tissue, coralline algae, and other,
undocumented sources.)
“What is shocking is that these fishes
have such short lifespans that many gen-
erations are passing with no recovery.
These things live for only 100 days with
Eviota sigillata (Seven-figure Pigmy Goby)
having the world record—it only lives for
59 days, max.”
Bellwood says that his team will be
doing annual checks on the status of the
gobies and their rank in the recovering
reefs. “I’m one of a handful of scientists
in the world working on goby ecology, and
we still know little more about them than
we did when Charles Darwin visited Aus-
tralia. But because of their vast numbers,
rapid growth rates and fast turnover, they
are a real powerhouse for the Reef, pro-
viding nutrition for a great many other
species directly or indirectly. If they dis-
appear from the system, it signals some-
thing is profoundly amiss.”
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REFERENCES
From materials released by the ARC Centre of
Excellence, James Cook University, Townsville,
Australia.
ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef
Studies— http://www.coralcoe.org.au/
Bellwood DR, Hoey AS, Ackerman JL,
Depczynski M (2006) Coral bleaching, reef fish
community phase shifts and the resilience of
coral reefs. Global Change Biology 12: 1587-
1594 pdf
Bellwood Lab — http://www.coralcoe.org.au/
research/bellwoodlab/ home%20page.htm
