Climate change and warming seas are transforming tropical coral reefs and undoing decades of knowledge about how to protect these delicate and vital ecosystems. Many of the world's coral reefs are seeing biodiversity plunge in the face of repeated coral bleaching events.
The near-shore habitats of Bahia Las Minas in the central Caribbean coast of Panama became heavily contaminated after a refinery accident in 1986. Over the next five years, there was a significant decline in the numbers and diversity of corals.
Marine megafauna, the largest animals in the oceans, serve key roles in ecosystem functioning. Yet, one-third of these animals are at risk of extinction. To better understand the potential consequences of megafaunal loss, here we quantify their current functional diversity, predict future changes under different extinction scenarios, and introduce a new metric [functionally unique, specialized and endangered (FUSE)] that identifies threatened species of particular importance for functional diversity.