ArticleCommunications biology2022
Stony coral tissue loss disease decimated Caribbean coral populations and reshaped reef functionality.
Article in Communications biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 147 citations in OpenAlex.
- Integrating fossil data in ecological niche models to improve predictions of future habitat of Caribbean corals.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- Evaluating the protection status and exposure to warming of Caribbean reefs with high functional potential.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- A Comparison of Juvenile and Adult Sunflower Sea Star Transcriptomic Responses to Challenge With Sea Star Wasting Disease Tissue Homogenates.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Sediment burial reduces coral larval settlement, recruit survivorship, and inhibits the recovery of coral populations.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Alkalinity enrichment stimulates calcification and linear extension in Acropora cervicornis.Scientific reports · 2026Article
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- Runaway coral-algal dysbiosis may be responsible for rapid coral tissue loss.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Coral larvae have unique transcriptomic responses to pathogenic and probiotic bacteria.Coral reefs (Online) · 2026Article
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- Towards a systematic framework to assess restoration success of interventions in coral reef ecosystems.PloS one · 2026Article
- Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Results in Persistent Microbial-Level Disturbances on Coral Reef Ecosystems.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Article
- Coral cover and species responses to heat exposure vary across contemporary Western Atlantic reefs.Scientific reports · 2025Article
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- Machine learning reveals distinct gene expression signatures across tissue states in stony coral tissue loss disease.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Genomes of the Caribbean reef-building corals Colpophyllia natans, Dendrogyra cylindrus, and Siderastrea siderea.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Article
- Tracking over 30 years of coral reef infrastructure degradation in Barbados.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Halobacteriovorax halts disease progression in endangered Caribbean corals.The ISME journal · 2025Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Diseases are major drivers of the deterioration of coral reefs and are linked to major declines in coral abundance, reef functionality, and reef-related ecosystems services. An outbreak of a new disease is currently rampaging through the populations of the remaining reef-building corals across the Caribbean region. The outbreak was first reported in Florida in 2014 and reached the northern Mesoamerican Reef by summer 2018, where it spread across the ~450-km reef system in only a few months. Rapid spread was generalized across all sites and mortality rates ranged from 94% to <10% among the 21 afflicted coral species. Most species of the family Meandrinadae (maze corals) and subfamily Faviinae (brain corals) sustained losses >50%. This single event further modified the coral communities across the region by increasing the relative dominance of weedy corals and reducing reef functionality, both in terms of functional diversity and calcium carbonate production. This emergent disease is likely to become the most lethal disturbance ever recorded in the Caribbean, and it will likely result in the onset of a new functional regime where key reef-building and complex branching acroporids, an apparently unaffected genus that underwent severe population declines decades ago and retained low population levels, will once again become conspicuous structural features in reef systems with yet even lower levels of physical functionality.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.