Ann F Budd

University of Iowa | UI · Department of Geoscience

The early Paleogene “greenhouse” is the warmest geological period of the Cenozoic and a suitable source to unlock crucial information for better understanding how ecosystems such as coral reefs reacted to a climate much warmer than the present. Herein, we analyse in detail the rich museum coral collections from Friuli region (NE Italy) focusing onl...

The lower-middle Eocene shallow-water deposits of the eastern Friuli, already highlighted more than a century ago by the seminal work of G. Dainelli, have been reconsidered by integrating data from museum collections (scleractinian corals) and larger foraminiferal assemblages resampled from selected localities. The colonial scleractinian corals exa...

The Oligocene, well known as the apex of Cenozoic reef growth, is a crucial period of time to investigate the mutual relationship between coral reef construction and coral diversity and their link with palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironmental changes. Here we provide a complete characterization of the Upper Oligocene reef complex of the Castro Limesto...

Aim The current assessment of extinction risk in reef corals by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been criticized, because coral life‐history traits associated with resilience are not reflected in the conservation status. We aimed to carry out a quantitative assessment of the link between reef coral traits and species ex...

Modern systematics integrating molecular and morphological data has greatly improved our understanding of coral evolutionary relationships during the last two decades and led to a deeply revised taxonomy of the order Scleractinia. The family Merulinidae (Cnidaria: Scleractinia) was recently subjected to a series of revisions following this integrat...

This erratum is published because vendor overlooked corrections related to Table 2 during proofing.

The present centre of coral diversity in the Western Indian Ocean is defined by the northern Mozambique Channel with an extension northward to Mafia Island in Tanzania (Eastern Africa). The geological and evolutionary history of this hotspot of marine biodiversity remains so far completely obscure, because Cenozoic fossil reef communities of this a...

Understanding evolutionary transitions in scleractinian corals is fundamental to predicting responses of coral reefs to climate change. We examine transitions between solitary and colonial corals in the fossil record, focusing on the Caribbean solitary reef coral Scolymia and members of the subfamily Mussinae. Fossil specimens are selected from a l...

Recent molecular analyses of the traditional scleractinian suborder Faviina have revealed a new Atlantic clade of reef corals, which disagrees with traditional classification. The new clade contradicts long-held notions of Cenozoic diversification being concentrated in the Pacific, and of Atlantic species bearing close evolutionary relationships wi...

Large environmental fluctuations often cause mass extinctions, extirpating species and transforming communities [1, 2]. While the effects on community structure are evident in the fossil record, demographic consequences for populations of individual species are harder to evaluate because fossils reveal relative, but not absolute, abundances. Howeve...

Lobophylliidae is a family-level clade of corals within the ‘robust’ lineage of Scleractinia. It comprises species traditionally classified as Indo-Pacific ‘mussids’, ‘faviids’, and ‘pectiniids’. Following detailed revisions of the closely related families Merulinidae, Mussidae, Montastraeidae, and Diploastraeidae, this monograph focuses on the tax...

The scleractinian family Lobophylliidae is undergoing a major taxonomic revision thanks to the combination of molecular and morphological data. In this study, we investigate the evolutionary relationships and the macro-and micromorphology of six nominal coral species belonging to two of the nine molecular clades of the Lobophylliidae, clades A and...

The formation of the Isthmus of Panama stands as one of the greatest natural events of the Cenozoic, driving profound biotic transformations on land and in the oceans. Some recent studies suggest that the Isthmus formed many millions of years earlier than the widely recognized age of approximately 3 million years ago (Ma), a result that if true wou...

Scleractinian systematics have undergone rapid changes due to increased use of molecular phylogenetics and new perspectives on skeletal morphology from micromorphology and microstructure. Despite this increase in characters there are still unresolved clades in the phylogeny, indicating that more characters are needed. This study investigates a new...

Traditional morphology-based systematics indicates close evolutionary relationships between Caribbean and Indo-Pacific ‘faviid’ and ‘mussid’ reef corals. However, molecular phylogenies reveal three distinct family-level clades, which diverged by middle Eocene time: (1) Caribbean faviids + mussids; (2) Indo-Pacific faviids; and (3) Indo-Pacific muss...

A preliminary documentation of the coral reefs from Libya International Conference on Geology June 22-23, 2015 Florida, USA Belkasim Khameiss1, William Hoyt, Saad K El Ebaidi, Ahmed Muftah, James Klaus and Ann Budd4 Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Geol Geosci DOI: 10.4172/2329-6755.S1.003 Abstract Corals studies in Libya are very limited, although...

The reduction in coral cover on many contemporary tropical reefs suggests a different set of coral community assemblages will dominate future reefs. To evaluate the capacity of reef corals to persist over various time scales, we examined coral community dynamics in contemporary, fossil, and simulated future coral reef ecosystems. Based on studies b...

Modern coral taxonomy has begun to resolve many long-standing problems in traditional systematics stemming from its reliance on skeletal macromorphology. By integrating examinations of colony, corallite, and subcorallite morphology with the molecular sequence data that have proliferated in the last decade, many taxa spread across the scleractinian...

Recent advances in scleractinian systematics and taxonomy have been achieved through the integration of molecular and morphological data, as well as rigorous analysis using phylogenetic methods. In this study, we continue in our pursuit of a phylogenetic classification by examining the evolutionary relationships between the closely related reef cor...

Molecular analyses are transforming our understanding of the evolution of scleractinian corals and conflict with traditional classification, which is based on skeletal morphology. A new classification system, which integrates molecular and morphological data, is essential for documenting patterns of biodiversity and establishing priorities for mari...

Even with well-known sampling biases, the fossil record is key to understanding macro-evolutionary patterns. During the Miocene to Pleistocene in the Caribbean Sea, the fossil record of scleractinian corals shows a remarkable period of rapid diversification followed by massive extinction. Here we combine a time-calibrated molecular phylogeny based...

Gene trees for (A)CaM, (B)MaSC-1, and (C)Pax-C. Alleles are designated by locus_allele number. Node labels indicate Bayesian posterior probabilities/Maximum likelihood bootstrap support, -- < 50% ML support. Two-tone boxes indicate alleles shared between taxa. All trees produced in MrBayes v3.1 (generations = 5,000,000, nruns = 2, nchains = 4.) The...

Sampling and genotype data for all individual corals. Samples and multilocus genotypes used in gene and concatenated trees. Heterozygous genotypes that could not be resolved by cloning or PHASE 2.1.1 are indicated as ‘?/?+’; and ‘0’ indicates PCR failure or poor sequence quality. The two last columns designate which samples were used in the concate...

Stratigraphic Ranges of the Fossil Caribbean Faviidae. Compiled first and last occurrence data, references, and notes for all Caribbean fossil faviid species.

Alleles and Accession Numbers by Species. Number of individuals sequenced per species (n), the number of alleles isolated per locus per species, and Genbank accession numbers. All species carried unique alleles, except for the two Manicina species. The two last rows give the number of unique alleles in the combined Manicina data sets (Manicina spp....

Primers used for direct sequencing. Sequences and annealing temperatures for primers used in this study.

Recent advances in morphometrics and genetics have led to the discovery of numerous cryptic species in coral reef ecosystems. A prime example is the Montastraea annularis scleractinian coral species complex, in which morphological, genetic, and reproductive data concur on species boundaries, allowing evaluation of long-term patterns of speciation a...

This collection of papers is dedicated to the career and achievements of Dr. Jeremy B.C. Jackson, and is written by a sample of his students, post-docs, and colleagues over his career. Jackson is an influential leader in cross-disciplinary research integrating ecology and paleontology. His contributions are broad in scope, and range in topic from t...

The risk of global extinction of reef-building coral species is increasing. We evaluated extinction risk using a biological trait-based resiliency index that was compared with Caribbean extinction during the Plio-Pleistocene, and with extinction risk determined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Through the Plio-Pleistoce...

While Faviidae is a widely and uniformly dis-tributed coral family throughout the Indo-Pacific, the extensive phenotypic plasticity of colony surface and cor-allite features often confounds the use of macromorpho-logical characters in species identification, and contributes to conflict between traditional classification and molecular analyses of th...

A stratigraphic study of late Miocene-Pliocene mixed carbonate and siliciclastic sediment (upper part of the Yaque Group) was conducted in northern Hispaniola to refine the chronostratigraphy of uplifted, nearshore marine sequences in the Cibao Basin. Classic late Neogene sections in these sequences include a spectacularly preserved faunal record f...

Climate change is increasing the thermal stress on modern coral reefs, and has heightened interest in obtaining high-resolution temperature records associated with past reef building episodes to investigate the ability of corals to adapt to changing temperature regimes. Laser ablation ICPMS allows multi-element sampling across coral skeletons, and...

Recent speciation events provide potential opportunities to understand the microevolution of reproductive isolation. We used a marker-based approach and a common garden to estimate the additive genetic variation in skeletal traits in a system of two ecomorphs within the coral species Favia fragum: a Tall ecomorph that is a seagrass specialist, and...

Climate change is currently having an impact on shallow-water corals, and global circulation models predict that levels of pCO(2) and temperature will rise within the next century above anything recorded for at least the past 650 k.y. The Pliocene Epoch is a recent, albeit imperfect, geologic analog for such conditions in the Caribbean. Diverse com...

Temporal patterns are evaluated in Neogene reef coral assemblages from the Bocas del Toro Basin of Panama in order to understand how reef ecosystems respond to long-term environmental change. Analyses are based on a total of 1,702 zooxanthellate coral specimens collected from six coral-bearing units ranging in age from the earliest Late Miocene to...

Statistical analyses of occurrence data based on collections made from scattered Caribbean sections over the past 20 years indicate that turnover occurred in the Caribbean reef coral fauna between the late Miocene and early Pleistocene. The collections have been identified using standardized procedures, and age-dates assigned using high-resolution...

Recent molecular phylogenies conflict with traditional scleractinian classification at ranks ranging from suborder to genus, challenging morphologists to discover new characters that better agree with molecular data. Such characters are essential for including fossils in analyses and tracing evolutionary patterns through geologic time. We examine t...

Recent molecular work has revealed numerous species complexes of scleractinian reef corals. Although species within complexes are distinct through much of their distribution, hybridization has been discovered at species margins, and has been hypothesized as playing an important role in mediating responses to changing environments. In the present st...

This paper discusses the synthesis of bio-, magneto-, and isotope stratigraphies in the shallow-water sediment sequences drilled on guyots in the western Pacific Ocean during Leg 144. Material previously dredged from the slopes of a few guyots and the Cretaceous section recovered at Site 869 are also considered. The integrated stratigraphy along wi...

Scleractinian corals, which include the architects of coral reefs, are found throughout the world's oceans and have left a rich fossil record over their 240 million year history. Their classification has been marked by confusion but recently developed molecular and morphological tools are now leading to a better understanding of the evolutionary hi...

Conservation priorities are calculated on the basis of species richness, endemism, and threats. However, areas ranked highly for these factors may not represent regions of maximal evolutionary potential. The relationship between geography and evolutionary innovation was analyzed in a dominant complex of Caribbean reef corals, in which morphological...

Budd, A.F. and Stolarski, J. 2009. Searching for new morphological characters in scleractinian reef corals: comparison of septal teeth and granules between Atlantic and Pacific Mussidae. — Acta Zoologica (Stockholm) 90 : 142–165. Recent molecular analyses have challenged the traditional classification of scleractinian corals at all taxonomic levels...

Abstract Budd, A.F. and Stolarski, J. 2009. Searching for new morphological characters in scleractinian reef corals: comparison of septal teeth and granules between Atlantic and Pacific Mussidae. —Acta Zoologica (Stockholm) 90: 142–165. Recent molecular analyses have challenged the traditional classification of scleractinian corals at all taxonomic...

An assemblage of planktonic foraminifera is described from 125 samples taken from the Cercado, Gurabo, and Mao Formations in the Cibao Valley, northern Dominican Republic. The primary objectives of this study are to establish a biochronologic model for the late Neogene of the Dominican Republic and to examine sea surface conditions within the Cibao...

  The coral genus Isopora, a sister group of the modern dominant Acropora until now only known from the Pliocene to Recent of the Indo-Pacific, is recorded in the Caribbean for the first time. Two new species, Isopora ginsburgi and Isopora curacaoensis, are described from the Neogene Seroe Domi Formation of Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles. Study of l...

Estimates of species diversity on coral reefs are extremely high, yet hidden biological diversity makes even these, underestimates. The morphological complexity in the Caribbean reef coral Montastraea 'annularis' was originally interpreted as a single species because colony growth form was highly correlated with depth distribution from the coral re...

Species lists, localities, and accession numbers. (0.42 MB DOC)

Summary of possible changes to current taxonomy of reef-building corals [(1) for most corals, (2) for Fungiidae] and evidence supporting those changes. We list provisional placement based on mitochondrial data (from cox1 and cob from Fig. 1 unless otherwise noted); sources of additional evidence that supports the mitochondrial data are indicated in...

The relationship between natural variations in coral species diversity, reef development, and ecosystem function on coral reefs is poorly understood. Recent coral diversity varies 10-fold among geographic regions, but rates of reef growth are broadly similar, suggesting that diversity is unimportant for reef development. Differences in diversity ma...

Records of Cenozoic scleractinian coral species from the Caribbean region document a history of pulsed origination and extinction. Periods of elevated species richness during the middle to late Eocene (40–36 Ma), late Oligocene to earliest Miocene (28–22 Ma), and early Pliocene (5–2 Ma) are interrupted by pulses of extinction that drop regional div...

The Cibao Valley of the northern Dominican Republic has been of great interest to geoscientists for more than a century because its rich fossil fauna, temporally longranging sections, and geographically widespread exposures collectively provide an excellent system for innovative palaeobiological research. In order to provide context for the researc...

The NMITA database (http://nmita.geology.uiowa.edu) serves as a central data repository for the Dominican Republic Project and members of the team have been actively contributing data as the project progresses. NMITA was originally designed as a taxonomic database, the main purpose of which is to document the taxa that have been identified in paleo...

Our understanding of species boundaries in reef corals has changed considerably over the past decade due to new discoveries in the areas of molecular phylogenetics, population genetics, and reproductive biology (Knowlton and Budd, 2001; Willis et al., 2006). Several species, long thought to be highly variable, have been found to be complexes of mul...

Documenting the pattern of biodiversity change on global, regional, or local scales is an important use of paleontological data. Long-term trends of taxonomic richness and the rate of first and last occurrences of taxa can be used to study effects of environmental change on ecosystems and is of significant relevance during this time of increased co...

Modern hard corals (Class Hexacorallia; Order Scleractinia) are widely studied because of their fundamental role in reef building and their superb fossil record extending back to the Triassic. Nevertheless, interpretations of their evolutionary relationships have been in flux for over a decade. Recent analyses undermine the legitimacy of traditiona...

An exceptionally well-preserved aragonitic coral of the extinctspecies Goniopora hilli was collected from late Cenozoic sedimentarydeposits in the Dominican Republic and dated using U-Pb techniques.Nine coralline subsamples yielded a 238U/206Pb-207Pb/206Pbthree-dimensional (3-D) inverse linear concordia age of 5.52± 0.15 (2) Ma, which, when coupled...

This chapter sets the tectonic, geologic, and stratigraphic stage for many of the chapters that follow—it is largely a review, but some new results and reinterpretations are included. Our new results include refined age dates for the key Miocene and Pliocene sections along the Río Gurabo and the Río Cana (Fig. 2.1). This project has focused on four...

Science is supposedly ultimately constrained by the nature of the physical world, meaning that changes in scientific methods and practice are supposed to be away from those with less utility and toward those that are more revealing, useful, and productive of insights into the nature of that world. In practice, however, science is no less susceptibl...

Sample populations of Solenastrea fairbanksi, collected from different environments in the Pliocene Imperial Formation, can be distinguished by measurements of linear dimensions of the coenosteum and thickness of septal structures. In these characters, magnitudes of intercolony variance components are lower than interpopulation or intracolony compo...