Abstract
Attempting to understand sea-level history provides a vigorous intellectual workout. After negotiating a long path through data and the concept of mixed quality. One finds global ice volume has fluctuated by tens of meter sea level equivalent at a rate that is difficult to resolve. The recent mass mortality of Caribbean reef corals dramatically altered reef community structure and begs the question of the past stability and persistence of coral assemblages before human disturbance began. We report within habitat stability in coral community composition in the Pleistocene fossil record of Barbados for at least 95 000 years despite marked variability in global sea level and climate. Results were consistent for surveys of both common and rare taxa. Comparison of Pleistocene and modern community structure shows that Recent human impacts have changed coral community structure in ways not observed in the preceding 220 000 years.
The case is made by presenting the first quantitative history of water depth above the Red Sea sill for the last 470,000 years, a time period that includes the four most recent glacial-interglacial cycles, and by discussing the predictable consequences of any land bridge formation on the Red Sea sedimentary and microfossil records. The absence of post-Miocene Red Sea land bridges has extensive implications for biogeographic models in the Afro-Arabian region.
Introduction
In the history of life, environmental change has had a very uneven effect on the earth biota. Some of the changes have occurred on the very grandest of scales, such as the Merging and ensuing breaking up of huge supercontinents, or the decimation of the dinosaurs by extra-terrestrial impacts. reefs are not invulnerable to such process, the history of their diversity throughout the past 600 million years of the Phanerozoic has been enormously affected by environmental changes in ocean chemistry, sea level and climate. The main integral part of the development of reefs, both coral and non-coral are climate changes. The recent past history of living species resident on today’s reefs have been affected by multiple cycles of global environmental change throughout the past 2 million years (Ma) of the Quaternary.
Here, I provide two examples from the Pleistocene fossil record of coral reefs that illustrate the way in which an understanding of the history of reefs might provide relevant information to the ecology of living reefs in the face of environmental change. I follow the distinctions made by Buddemeier and Smith (1999) and use “climate change” to denote variation in sea level, atmospheric CO2 concentration, inhabitable tropical benthic area, and possibly temperature associated with glacial cycles; “local environmental change” to denote variation at the point sources in sediment load, turbidity, light, etc., including anthropogenic influences such as pollution, nutrient content, overfishing, etc. “Cumulative changes” are confined to local reefs, but have global importance because they occur at a number of discrete locations. I also use the terms “local” and “regional” when I discuss the importance of various ecological controls occurring in coral reef communities. Local controls include biotic interactions, niche diversification, and disturbance, whereas regional influences include species dispersal capabilities and colonization potential related to size of the species pool. Finally, in this paper I use the term local for distances 4,000 km. Local environmental differences had a greater influence on Pleistocene Indo-Pacific reef coral communities from Papua New Guinea than environmental variations associated with different climate stages. Local environmental differences produced locally distinct coral communities, but these different communities consistently reoccurred throughout a 95 ka (thousand years) interval which included major changes in global climate and sea level. Moreover, the communities do not appear to be dispersal-limited , so local processes were important in their community dynamics.
The Pleistocene Reef Coral Fossil Record
In this world of huge fossil fuel record of quaternary coral reef has the Capac ability to be a The vast fossil record of Quaternary coral reefs has the potential to be an Immensely valuable historical database for the ecological, taxonomic and progressives study of living reef. There were number of coral ref species were found in the fossil fuel with complete degree of accuracy as in the modern and this even includes genealogical Species complex.This is not to say there is no species problem in fossil corals, but the latest data are revealing that under lying genetic differences, more often than not, translate into quantifiable morphological differences among reef corals, and thus should be preserved in the fossil record. In other case , we can say that even aithough cloning and some what morality blot their inherent vividness, coral reef colonies tend to discrete individuals from the which relative abundance data can beeasily obtained. Moreover, in many instances, reef corals can be found to accumulate upright, whole and in life position, accumulating within the fabric of the reef as the reef builds through time Even although after a large time slot, relatively the huge fossil corals are reflect the species relative abundance patterns of the original coral community that lived on the reef. Fossil reef coral assemblages are amenable to rigorous ecological sampling design and statistical inquiry of both relative abundance and species presence and absence data. Or either in this case the developed high resolution radiometric age dating techniques its get very easy to demonstate about the colonies of th coral reef, with a resolution of 20-30 per 1,000 years.. Thus, we have good control on the time period represented in the fossil coral assemblages. Now in the end the coral reef have very hard structure or we say very hard skeletons, the potential recovery of species inhabiting the original reefs is very high, though this may diminish where fragile branching species were common.
Discussion
Community response to Pleistocene environmental change
In the communities of the coral reef like Pleistocene are distinct from each other in the same environment also for example- reefs of the same age from different places along the Huon Peninsula coast than between reefs formed at different times Pleistocene reef coral communities within the same environment are more distinct between reefs of the same age from different places along the Huon Peninsula coast than between reefs formed at different times in many chapters I have discussed the I have ecological implications of this persistence through time. Here I would like to concentrate on two implications of finding site differences maintained throughout the 95 ka interval. Now the following are the finding site differences:
- The species found in the different coast like Hubegong and Sialum versus Kanzarua was probably due to the influence of the Tewai River at Kanzarua. Near Kanzarua which contains of some fine sediment and sometimes also contain blankets the nearshore environment, whereas at Hubegong and Sialum nearby rivers don’t normally produce such fine sediments in close proximity to the developing reef. The difference occurs between these sites were maintained by several glacial cycles, we all know that the global climate changes indirectly which means there were the difference in the condition of glacial cycles during the successive high sea levels stands. The percentage of CO2 is different in a different atmosphere, different sea levels and hence different potential inhabitable benthic areas (0-30 m) between 30N and 30oS.
The temperature near the sea surface always remains to fluctuate and it difficult to find out the exact value of the temperature. The maintenance of community structure through time at each site during fluctuations in global climate variables suggests that local environmental parameters, such as reef physiography and terrigenous input, played a greater role in determining the taxonomic composition of Pleistocene reef coral assemblages than global environmental differences associated with glacial/interglacial cycles. - In a topic like disturbance, niche diversification, and biotic interaction, versus regional influences such as the size of the species pool and dispersal capabilities of the component species, on species maintenance in communities and etc, ecologists have long debated the relative influences of the local ecological process. Clearly, both sets of processes are important. For example, although the size of the species pool is correlated with species diversity in local reef communities, a significant amount of variation is attributable to local aspects of the community such as depth and habitat, reflecting both physical aspects of the environment (wave energy and light), and biological interactions (e.g., competition, overtopping, and symbiosis).
Both local and regional ecological influences could account for the persistence through time of the same coral assemblages in PNG. In the ecological process the important thing is that we must recurrence the same species with the same environments and interaction between them. Similarly, when regional ecological processes are important, sampling of the regional species pool will result in species abundance in proportion to the total number of propagules generated by each species. Assuming number of propagules is proportional to geographic abundance, the most widespread species regionally should be the most dominant species locally. But in the Pleistocene reefs in both PNG and Curacao, locally dominant species were no more geographically widespread than locally nondominant taxa. It is noteworthy that similar results were obtained in the Indo-Pacific and the Caribbean, yet order of magnitude differences in area and coral species diversity occur between them. As shown now in recent studies of both fish, successful recruitment is not always directly related to probability of colonization. Thus, we need to consider local ecological processes in determining community structure, such as local environments, biotic interactions and other post-settlement events. If local biotic interactions and/or adaptation to local environments that occur within local communities are important throughout the region, then regional composition and diversity will be the summed effect of local processes. Both the local and regional diversity can affect by the change in the temperature or any change in the environment which directly contribute to global change. This is not to downplay the interconnectedness of coral reefs, which can be viewed as metacommunities. The maintenance of metacommunities and process of metapopulation can depend on the maintance of the the local patches.Thus, it is urgent we begin to understand how environmental change, whether local or global in origin, influences community dynamics over both local and regional scales.
Conclusions
In this essay I have mainly focus on the red sea coral reef, coral reef record in the fossil fuels and a model for changes in Red Sea d18O with respect to sea level. In this the main view have been successful in generating sea-level estimates for the glacial recovery period as validated by coral reef estimates of global sea level. The sensitivity is to large changes in net evaporation and temperature has been established and gives a model uncertainty of F12 m on our sea-level estimates. Now what this uncertainty in the model which means if this occur then the result may be reduced in future as improved records of temperature and evaporation/precipitation become available. Thorough investigation of the effects of friction and isostatic rebound at the sill will further improve confidence in the result presented here. The basin model is consistent with the observed basin gradient in d18O concentrations. Assuming a simple linear variation along the length of the basin, central Red Sea d18O values agree well with the d18O values from southern and northern basin cores. The correspondence between cores is convincing and demonstrates that the method is independent of which core is used to generate sea levels.
This study demonstrates that southern basin cores may be subject to more noise due to the seasonal infiltration of GAIW near to Bab el Mandab. Cores from the extreme northern basin demonstrate variability due to climatic responses to northern hemisphere forcings. The most suitable sediment cores for generating global sea-level estimates are therefore central Red Sea cores. The Red Sea is preferable to other marginal basins such as the Mediterranean in this type of study for several reasons. Bab el Mandab at Hanish Sill (137 m) is considerably shallower than the Strait of Gibraltar at Camarinal Sill (300 m). It is of particular significance that the depth of Hanish Sill is of a similar depth to the marginal seas, which may show a similar sea-level maximum glacial sea level excursion and therefore responds more strongly to sea level variations. Essentially, the ‘choking’ of the Red Sea is far more important with respect to glacial to interglacial sealevel changes than for the Mediterranean. As discussed earlier, the reduced catchment of the Red Sea means that the estimate of net evaporation over the Red Sea is subject to less uncertainty than in the Mediterranean where freshwater inputs, for example, from the Nile, Po, Ebro and the Bosporus, affect the basin hydrography. The Red Sea basin is long and narrow and although rotation certainly affects the basin, there remains a relatively straightforward pattern of buoyancy distribution. The same is not the case in the Mediterranean, which is much wider and is subject to a more complicated system of gyres, boundary currents and jets. While sea level undoubtedly affects the Mediterranean, this effect is likely to be less important for that basin compared to changes in evaporation/precipitation, temperature and circulation than is the case for the Red Sea. The authors are, at present, unaware of otherdominated response to that of the Red Sea and an exchange system which may be simulated in a simple manner. If such a marginal sea exists, then a method such as that presented here would be equally applicable elsewhere.
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