Aldo Croquer

The Nature Conservancy

Atlantic reef-building corals and coral reefs continue to experience extensive decline due to increased stressors related to climate change, disease, pollution, and numerous anthropogenic threats. To understand the impact of ocean warming and reef loss on the estimated extinction risk of shallow water Atlantic reef-building scleractinians and mille...

As climate change drives health declines of tropical reef species, diseases are further eroding ecosystem function and habitat resilience. Coral disease impacts many areas around the world, removing some foundation species to recorded low levels and thwarting worldwide efforts to restore reefs. What we know about coral disease processes remains ins...

This paper explores spatial and temporal patterns in the abundance of parrotfish assemblages along trhe northern coastof the Dominican Republic. We show high spatial and temporal variability for these assemblages at dofferent spatial scales. Parrotfish along localities and sites are dominated by small-size species and small-size individuals. These...

Understanding the dynamics of coral recruitment and post-settlement is fundamental to a better comprehension of coral reef dynamics and recovery. We studied the abundance and survivorship of coral recruits and juveniles together with benthic dynamics at a scale of months and centimeters in Playa Mero reef, a disturbed reef in Morrocoy National Park...

Massive spawning of bleached colonies from six coral species was recorded in Guanahacabibes National Park, Cuba in August–September 2023. Bleached corals spawned within regional predictions, which indicates that bleaching did not interrupt sexual coral reproduction for this species. However, it is unclear if larval settlement and survival were redu...

Permanent monitoring programs are valuable to identify drivers of ecosystem trends. For example, in 2021, we reported the first record of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (sctld) along the northeastern coast of the Dominican Republic, affecting major reef—building coral species with a prevalence above 30%. However, a few sites such as Carenero remai...

Caribbean coral reefs have been declining at unprecedented rates, with about 50% of live coral cover lost over the past 50 years. The description of benthic and associated fish assemblages in remote areas, supposedly less vulnerable to human stressors, is necessary to better understand the spatial extent of declining trends, and to target areas for...

Esta guía ha sido adaptada para buzos que no necesariamente son científicos, con el objetivo de fomentar la participación ciudadana para expandir geográficamente las observaciones de las condiciones de salud de los corales y de otros organismos arrecifales en la República Dominicana. El documento sirve más al propósito de fortalecer el plan de mon...

Monitoring programs can help understand coral disease dynamics. Here, we present results from a national program in the Dominican Republic (DR) aimed at evaluating coral diseases 3 times a year following a nested spatial design. Prevalence of coral diseases in DR varied from sites to regions, suggesting that disease dynamics can be driven by local...

The results show that there are no significant temporal differences in the prevalence of coral diseases between the sampling times during the year. (Fig. 3) The presence/absence of these conditions is determined by spatial scales at the locality and site level, with the exception of SCTLD which was only found in the northern region. The sites with...

Echinoderm mass mortality events shape marine ecosystems by altering the dynamics among major benthic groups. The sea urchin Diadema antillarum, virtually extirpated in the Caribbean in the early 1980s by an unknown cause, recently experienced another mass mortality beginning in January 2022. We investigated the cause of this mass mortality event t...

In the 1980s, two overlapping dramatic events structurally changed Caribbean reefs: the massive die-offs of Diadema antillarum and acroporid corals. Four decades later, we present new reports of extensive D. antillarum mortality and Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease acting simultaneously in southeastern Dominican Republic.

Monitoring programs can help understand coral disease dynamics. Here, we present results from a national program in the Dominican Republic (DR) aimed at evaluating coral diseases 3 times a year following a nested spatial design. Prevalence of coral diseases in DR varied from sites to regions, suggesting that disease dynamics can be driven by local...

Chapter 12. Status and trends of coral reefs of the Caribbean region, pp. 1-25. In: Souter, D., Planes, S., Wicquart, J., Logan, M., Obura, D., & Staub, F. (Eds.) Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2020. Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, International Coral Reef Iniciative, Australian Institute of Marine Science, & Australian Governement.

Climate change has become the greatest threat to the world's ecosystems. Locating and managing areas that contribute to the survival of key species under climate change is critical for the persistence of ecosystems in the future. Here, we identify ‘Climate Priority’ sites as coral reefs exposed to relatively low levels of climate stress that will b...

Crustose Coralline Algae (CCA) is a well-known settlement inducer for stony corals and, ultimately, recruitment, a vital component for reef growth and resilience. However, potential impacts of diseased CCA on larval settlement are not fully understood, especially on particular coral species. As oceans continue to warm, coral larvae need to be able...

Los arrecifes coralinos se consideran ecosistemas análogos a los bosques lluviosos, en términos de biodiversidad y variedad de bienes y servicios ecosistémicos que proveen. La pérdida acelerada de áreas coralinas a escala global es conocida como la crisis de los arrecifes, la cual es particularmente tangible en el Caribe. Aunque se sabe que la comb...

Acropora cervicornis is one of the most important coral species in shallow reefs of the Caribbean as it provides habitat and structural complexity to several species of invertebrates and fish. However, the distribution range of A. cervicornis has shrunk and collapsed considerably in the last five decades, due to a combination of factors including t...

The sea urchin Diadema antillarum is an herbivore that plays an important ecological role in controlling benthic community structure in Caribbean reefs. After the mass mortality documented between 1982-1983, their populations were reduced by 94-99% triggering a phase shift from coral to macroalgae-dominated benthic communities across the Caribbean....

For several decades, white plagues (WPDs: WPD-I, II and III) and more recently, stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) have significantly impacted Caribbean corals. These diseases are often difficult to separate in the field as they produce similar gross signs. Here we aimed to compare what we know about WPD and SCTLD in terms of: (1) pathology, (...

Over the past decade, coral restoration efforts have increased as reefs continue to decline at unprecedented rates. Identifying suitable coral outplanting locations to maximize coral survival continues to be one of the biggest challenges for restoration practitioners. Here, we demonstrate methods of using derivatives from imaging spectroscopy from...

Coral assisted fertilization, larval rearing and recruit propagation success in significant ecological scales, largely depend on scaling up and replicating these efforts in as many regions as possible. The Dominican Foundation for Marine Studies (FUNDEMAR) has become a pioneer of these efforts in the Dominican Republic, being the first institution...

In an era of coral reef decline, coral restoration is receiving increasing attention, with many recent developments in culture and transplant techniques. However, how the ecological processes operating on coral reefs influence the success of restoration efforts remains largely unexplored, particularly during the first months after outplanting which...

This dataset contains 2850 photographs of the seafloor in coral communities from Venezuela that were taken during 2017 and 2018. We used a hierarchical experimental design with four random factors representing four different spatial scales: (1) region (hundreds of kilometers), (2) localities (tens of kilometers), (2) reef sites (hundreds of meters)...

Adaptation to changes in the delivery of ecosystem services while maintaining resilience of natural systems is one of the main challenges faced by multi-use marine protected areas (MPAs). To overcome this, it is crucial to improve our understanding of interdependencies among resource users and ecosystems. In this study we used networks to model the...

La contribución de los Grupos de Trabajo I, II y III al Primer Reporte Académico de Cambio Climático (PRACC) de la Academia de Ciencias Físicas, Matemáticas y Naturales (ACFIMAN), bajo la coordinación científica de la Secretaría Académica de Cambio Climático (SACC) de la ACFIMAN, permite estudiar los datos e información relativos al cambio climátic...

La contribución de los Grupos de Trabajo I, II y III al Primer Reporte Académico de Cambio Climático (PRACC) de la Academia de Ciencias Físicas, Matemáticas y Naturales (ACFIMAN), bajo la coordinación científica de la Secretaría Académica de Cambio Climático (SACC) de la ACFIMAN, permite estudiar los datos e información relativos al cambio climátic...

Information on the status of the pillar coral Dendrogyra cylindrus across its global distribution range is needed to plan and implement effective conservation interventions at both the national and regional level. Knowledge on the species distribution and abundance on the southernmost edge of its range was limited to qualitative data gathered in th...

Estimating variability across spatial scales has been a major issue in ecology because the description of patterns in space is extremely valuable to propose specific hypotheses to unveil key processes behind these patterns. This paper aims to estimate the variability of the coral assemblage structure at different spatial scales in order to determin...

The characteristics of coral reef sampling and monitoring are highly variable, with numbers of units and sampling effort varying from one study to another. Numerous works have been carried out to determine an appropriate effect size through statistical power; however, these were always from a univariate perspective. In this work, we used the pseudo...

Lionfish (Pterois volitans) have rapidly invaded the tropical Atlantic and spread across the wider Caribbean in a relatively short period of time. Because of its high invasion capacity, we used it as a model to identify the connectivity among nine marine protected areas (MPAs) situated in four countries in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea....

Dendrogyra cylindrus sexual recruits have been reared ex situ, however, no record of recruits surviving outplanting to the reef exist. We report recruit survival after one year of outplanting to a nursery, proving D. cylindrus can overcome post-settlement bottlenecks in situ and indicating larval propagation might help restore this species.

Esta es la presentación para la charla denominada: "Patrones de variación espacial en la abundancia de corales juveniles, de pocos centímetros a kilómetros: Caso de estudio en el Oriente de Venezuela" presentada en el XII Congreso Venezolano de Ecología el 21 de noviembre de 2020. En Venezuela, la mayoría de los estudios realizados se han centrado...

Esta es la presentación para la charla denominada:"La historia de Playa Mero: Uso de modelos tridimensionales del bentos para estudiar las dinámicas ecológicas de corales juveniles en un arrecife perturbado.", presentada en el XII Congreso Venezolano de Ecología el 20 de noviembre de 2020. Esta presentación muestra algunos resultados de mi tesis de...

Global and local stressors are causing the worldwide loss of coral cover and structural complexity at an unprecedented pace on reefs. In consequence, the habitat of coral reef fish has suffered a profound degradation affecting the abundance, biodiversity and species composition of this taxonomic group. Thus, understanding the link between coral ree...

The characteristics of coral reef sampling and monitoring are highly variable, with numbers of units and sampling effort varying from one study to another. Numerous works have been carried out to determine an appropriate effect size through statistical power, however, always from a univariate perspective. In this work, we aimed to assess the pseudo...

Coral disease research encompasses five decades of undeniable progress. Since the first descriptions of anomalous signs, we have come to understand multiple processes and environmental drivers that interact with coral pathologies. In order to gain a better insight into the knowledge we already have, we explored how key topics in coral disease resea...

Young coral ecological dynamics are fundamental to understand the recovery process of damaged reefs. In Venezuela there is a natural laboratory in Morrocoy National Park. Playa Mero reef coral cover declined from 40% to less than 5% after a massive dead event. Two decades after we asked why if there are young corals, they haven't been able to stabl...

Coral recruitment refers to the processes allowing maintenance and renewal of coral communities. Recruitment success is therefore indispensable for coral reef recovery after disturbances. Recruitment processes are governed by a variety of factors occurring at all spatial and temporal scales, from centimetres to hundreds of kilometres. In the presen...

To date, we know that Caribbean Yellow Band Disease (CYBD) has direct effects on coral zooxanthellae and compromises detoxification mechanisms in the holobiont. However, little is known about the ability of diseased corals to recover after being exposed to xenobiotics. Because of this, we evaluated and to compared the detoxification response in he...

The implantation and development of new methods aimed to assess the health status of coral reefs is a tenet core for the conservation science of these systems. For years, coral reefs communities have been described in Venezuela; however, no efforts to classify the health status of these systems have been accomplished. Part of the problem is that re...

Caribbean Coastal Marine Productivity (CARICOMP) was a basin-wide cooperative, international network of marine laboratories established in 1985. Recognizing major trends of change in coastal ecosystems and the importance of the linkages among them, our goal was to monitor synoptically with standardized methods the physical environment and to docume...

Coral disease research encompasses five decades of undeniable progress. Since the first descriptions of anomalous signs, we have come to understand multiple processes and environmental drivers that interact with coral pathologies. In order to gain a better insight into the knowledge we already have, we explored how key topics in coral disease resea...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0188564.].

Se discutió acerca de la importancia de la existencia de una robusta investigación orientada hacia la identificación de los impactos del cambio climático en los sistemas agrícolas animal y vegetal, a pesar de la incertidumbre asociada al análisis de diversas escalas y, a los métodos de simulación climática aplicables a escala país. Se advirtió sobr...

Coastal ecosystems and the livelihoods they support are threatened by stressors acting at global and local scales. Here we used the data produced by the Caribbean Coastal Marine Productivity program (CARICOMP), the longest, largest monitoring program in the wider Caribbean, to evidence local-scale (decreases in water quality) and global-scale (incr...

Mixed effect models results. Word file including non-linear mixed effect model fits for temperature and visibility. (DOCX)

Site metadata. Word file including metadata for all CARICOMP stations included in the database and mixed effect model fits for temperature and visibility. (DOCX)

CARICOMP environmental database. Text file including all CARICOMP’s weekly environmental data. (TXT)

Octocorals (Cnidaria, Octocorallia) constitute a geographically widely distributed and common group of marine invertebrates commonly referred to as “soft-corals,” “sea fans,” “horny corals,” “sea feathers,” and “sea plumes.” They are found from shallow coastal habitats to mesophotic and abyssal depths. Octocorals are important members of most Atlan...

Caribbean ciliate infection (CCI) and white band disease (WBD) are diseases that affect a multitude of coral hosts and are associated with rapid rates of tissue losses, thus contributing to declining coral cover in Caribbean reefs. In this study we compared tissue mortality rates associated to CCI in three species of corals with different growth fo...

Raw data

This study evaluated pollution levels in water and sediments of Península de Paraguaná and related these levels with benthic macrofauna along a coastal area where the largest Venezuelan oil refineries have operated over the past 60 years. For this, the concentration of heavy metals, of hydrocarbon compounds and the community structure of the macrob...

Raw data. Major taxanomical groups recorded across years, sites and months along the western coast of Paraguná, Venezuela.

Raw data. Polychaete families recorded across years, sites and months along the western coast of Paraguaná, Venezuela.

Supplementary table. Enrichment factors (EF) of several heavy metals recorded in ten sediments along the western cpst of Paraguaná. EFs were calculated using Fe as metal of reference.

Raw data. Chemical variables measured in water and sediments across years, months and sites along the western coast of Paraguaná, Venezuela.

Healthy and diseased corals are threatened by different anthropogenic sources, such as pollution, a problem expected to become more severe in the near future. Despite the fact that coastal pollution and coral diseases might represent a serious threat to coral reef health, there is a paucity of controlled experiments showing whether the response of...

In the past decade, significant efforts have been made to describe fish-habitat associations. However, most studies have oversimplified actual connections between fish assemblages and their habitats by using univariate correlations. The purpose of this study was to identify the features of habitat forming corals that facilitate and influences assem...

Raw Data geometry explain fish assemblage Raw data containing the abundance of fishes and the geometrical characteristics of the A. cervicorn is colonies.

Background: This study compiles the diversity of sea anemones in different shallow habitats (i.e. rocky shores, coral reefs, mangroves and sandy bottoms) in several locations of Venezuela, including the most important marine reserves of Venezuela: Morrocoy National Park, Mochima National Park, Archipiélago de Los Roques National Park, Laguna de La...

Eight years ago (2007), the distribution and status of Acropora palmata was quantified throughout Los Roques archipelago in Venezuela. The aim was to produce a baseline study for this species which combined population genetics with demographic data. The results highlighted that A. palmata had the potential to recover in at least 6 out of 10 sites s...

A. palmata survey in Los Roques Croquer_etal.