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Two children, six and 10, survive stings by Irukandji jellyfish on WA beach.

Two children, six and 10, survive stings by Irukandji jellyfish on WA beach.

La mangrove victime du réchauffement en Australie.

Massive mangrove die-off on Gulf of Carpentaria worst in the world, says expert.

Cet écosystème indispensable a disparu sur des milliers d'hectares et sur un millier de kilomètres le long du littoral, probablement en quelques semaines.

The degree to which biotic communities are regionally enriched or locally saturated, and roles of key structuring processes, remain enduring ecological questions. Prior studies of reef-building corals of the Indo-West Pacific (IWP) found consistent evidence of regional enrichment, a finding subsequently questioned on methodological grounds. Here we revisit this relation and associated relations between richness and abundance (as "effective number of species"), and coral cover, used as a proxy for disturbance and competition. From 1994 to 2017, we sampled > 2,900 sites on shallow (typically < 8-10 m depth below reef crest) and deeper reef slopes in 26 coral ecoregions, from Arabia to the Coral Triangle, Eastern Australia, Micronesia and Fiji, for a total pool of 672 species. Sampling intensity varied among ecoregions but always approached asymptotic richness. Local coral communities on both shallow and deep reef slopes were, on average, comprised of 25% of regional pools, ranging from 12 to 43% for individual ecoregions. The richest individual shallow and deep sites, averaged across all ecoregions, comprised 42 and 40% of regional pools, ranging from 30 to 60%, the highest in environmentally marginal ecoregions. Analyses using log-ratio regression indicated that IWP coral communities on deeper reef slopes were intermediate between regionally enriched and locally saturated. Communities on shallow reef slopes showed more evidence of regional enrichment, consistent with these being most susceptible to disturbance. Unimodal curvilinear relations between local richness and coral cover provide support for disturbance mediation and competitive exclusion. IWP coral communities are clearly dynamic, shaped by biological, ecological, and oceanographic processes and disturbance regimes that influence reproduction, dispersal, recruitment, and survival. Yet there is also evidence for a degree of local saturation, consistent with a niche-neutral model of community assembly. The r

An innovative new assessment process shows the iconic Shark Bay World Heritage property in Western Australia is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

A new study shows small juvenile sea turtles have a very high occurrence of ingested plastic