Lorenzo Alvarez-Filip

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Verified

Lorenzo verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Researcher at National Autonomous University of Mexico

Marine ecosystems globally have suffered habitat, biodiversity and function loss in response to human activity. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can limit extractive activities and enhance ecosystem resilience, but do not directly address external stressors. We surveyed 48 sites within seven MPAs and nearby unprotected areas to evaluate drivers of cor...

The ecology of coral reefs is rapidly shifting from historical baselines. One key-question is whether under these new, less favourable ecological conditions, coral reefs will be able to sustain key geo-ecological processes such as the capacity to accumulate carbonate structure. Here, we use data from 34 Caribbean reef sites to examine how the carbo...

Understanding how emergent ecological assemblages have diverged from natural states is fundamental in predicting future functioning and services of ecosystems. Coral reefs are of particular concern due to their high susceptibility to anthropogenic stressors. Yet, little is known about their pre‐disturbance ranges of natural states, and most reports...

Diseases are major drivers of the deterioration of coral reefs and are linked to major declines in coral abundance, reef functionality, and reef-related ecosystems services. An outbreak of a new disease is currently rampaging through the populations of the remaining reef-building corals across the Caribbean region. The outbreak was first reported i...

Rapidly changing conditions alter disturbance patterns, highlighting the need to better understand how the transition from pulse disturbances to more persistent stress will impact ecosystem dynamics. We conducted a global analysis of the impacts of 11 types of disturbances on reef integrity using the rate of change of coral cover as a measure of da...

Context Restoration is an effective measure to counteract declines of reef-building coral populations. Despite decades of coral restoration research and practice, very little emphasis has been placed on how the spatial distribution of restoration sites influences ecosystem recovery and connectivity. Objectives Combining image classification of aer...

Acropora palmata is the species that contributes the most to the structural complexity of Caribbean reefs. Information concerning the complexity of its populations at the landscape level is relevant to determine how the reef system responds to disturbances, such as cyclonic events. This study examines the repercussions of hurricanes Gamma and Delta...

The Cozumel Reefs National Park (CRNP) is an important stepping-stone location in the Caribbean region, yet it has been exposed to natural disturbances such as hurricanes and thermal-stress episodes that can affect coral community structure, and the potential to change the coral functional roles. Therefore, this work evaluated the spatial and tempo...

Carbonate production by sclerobionts was quantified with calcification‐accretion units (CAUs) to evaluate the roles of different taxonomic groups in the construction and maintenance of coral reef structures in two sites in the Mexican Pacific with contrasting environmental characteristics: Yelapa and Isla Espíritu Santo (IES). Five CAUs were collec...

Sea urchins perform key ecological functions in coral reefs, such as herbivory and erosion of calcareous structures, which intensify at night. The Cayo Arenas reef, Campeche Bank, Mexico, is located far from the coast, which has helped to protect it from direct anthropogenic threats. However, no information is available on the status of sea urchin...

In 2023, the world’s oceans experienced record-high temperatures and the fourth global coral bleaching event, particularly devastating Caribbean reefs. We use drone-derived imagery from before, during and after the event to quantify the spatial extent of bleaching and mortality of the primary Caribbean reef-builder, Acropora palmata, across 170,000...

Phase shifts from hard coral to macroalgae have led to the formulation of a top-down herbivory paradigm, whose assumption is that a reduction in herbivory is the primary driver of these changes. Caribbean parrotfish from Scarus and Sparisoma genera are usually known as main reef herbivorous. Yet, they are a diverse group of organisms that perform m...

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...

The composition of coral-reef sediments is highly variable across space and time, and differences in the life histories of the dominant calcifying organisms on reefs contribute to the heterogeneity of reef sediments. Previous studies have suggested that variations in coral-reef bioerosion can influence spatial and temporal variations of sedimentary...

Promoting resilience is highly relevant to preserving biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. For coral reefs, parrotfish protection emerged as a mainstream action for reversing the degradation experienced by these systems. The rationale is that restoring their populations will increase grazing activity and reinforce control of fast‐growing macroal...

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...

Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) has caused widespread coral mortality in the Caribbean Region. However, how the disease presence alters the microbiome community, their structure, composition, and metabolic functionality is still poorly understood. In this study, we characterized the microbial communities of the tissues of apparently healthy...

Endolithic sponges are key players in carbonate cycling on coral reef systems. While their bioerosion of reef framework is relatively well studied, their role in biogenic sediment generation is poorly understood. In this study, the sedimentary attributes and production rates of eight Caribbean endolithic sponge species were characterized. The findi...

Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) has caused widespread coral mortality in the Caribbean Region. However, how the disease presence alters the microbiome community, their structure, composition, and metabolic functionality is still poorly understood. In this study, we characterized the microbial communities of the tissues of apparently healthy...

Reef functionality depends on the coral community’s species composition, abundance, and on the capacity of corals to build carbonate structures. Nevertheless, the coral’s contribution to functionality remains hidden in species morphological variation displayed. Here, we use three-dimensional (3D) models to estimate the morpho-functional space of 14...

Microplastic ingestion by marine fishes has been of particular interest, as many species are the target of commercial fisheries and, thus, have a strong connection with human health. Consumption of microplastic thru seafood is likely to have harmful effects on people globally but mainly on social groups that highly depend on fisheries for self-cons...

Functional trait-based approaches provide an opportunity to assess how changes in habitat affect the structure of associated communities. Global analyses have found a similarity in the composition of reef fish functional traits despite differences in species richness, environmental regimes, and habitat components. These large-scale patterns raised...

Ocean acidification (OA) has been identified as one of the major climate-change related threats, mainly due to its significant impacts on marine calcifiers. Among those are the calcareous green algae of the genus Halimeda that are known to be major carbonate producers in shallow tropical and subtropical seas. Hence, any negative OA impacts on these...

During coral calcification in massive scleractinian corals, a double annual banding of different densities (high- and low-density) is formed in their skeletons, which can provide a retrospective record of growth and the influence of environmental conditions on the coral’s lifespan. Evidence indicates that during the last decades, the reduction in c...

Background. Coral reefs exist thanks to the delicate balance between calcification and erosion processes. However, due to anthropogenic pressures, bioerosive processes have become the main forcing factors in reef growth patterns. Nevertheless, due to the morphology of the reefs located in the Mexican South Pacific (ex- tensive plates of pociloporid...

Coral mortality triggers the loss of carbonates fixed within coral skeletons, compromising the reef matrix. Here, we estimate rates of carbonate loss in newly deceased colonies of four Caribbean reef-building corals. We use samples from living and recently deceased colonies following a stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) outbreak. Optical densi...

Octocoral abundance is increasing on Caribbean reefs, and one of the possible causes is their vertical morphological plasticity that allows them to grow above the substrate to reduce the effect of processes that occur in it (e.g., scour by sediments) as well as adapt to environmental gradients. The aim of this study was to determine the morphometri...

In 2015, the communities of reef-associated motile macrocrustaceans (decapods and stomatopods) were compared between two coral reefs with contrasting levels of degradation in Puerto Morelos (Mexican Caribbean), “Limones”, less degraded, with a healthy live coral cover, and “Bonanza”, more degraded, with less live coral and more macroalgae. Since th...

Introduction: Hermatypic corals have the capacity to construct the physical reef-framework and maintain the balance of coral reef functionality. However, in the past three decades, coral communities have been menaced by natural and anthropic pressures, resulting in an abrupt coral cover decline, and slow natural recovery. To mitigate coral reef col...

Coral function largely depends on its structural complexity; for instance, corals with complex shapes can potentially provide more and diverse shelter than those with less complex shapes. However, the accurate determination of complexity traits has been historically difficult, so underwater photogrammetry has become popular in coral reef studies. A...

Coral reefs are the most diverse habitat per unit area in the world’s oceans, supporting an estimated 1–3 million species in only 0.2% of its area. These ecosystems have suffered severe declines since the 1970s, largely as a result of climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, disease, and overfishing. Porites astreoides is a shallow species t...

Studies using paleoecological and historical data can inform coral reef management by providing accurate ecological baselines and by pinpointing the timing, magnitude, and drivers of ecosystem declines. However, these studies have rarely been incorporated into policy and management frameworks. This working group brings together paleontologists, his...

Caribbean coral reef ecosystems have declined dramatically since systematic monitoring began in the 1970s. Over the past 50 years, they have lost between 50-80% of reef-building corals, their principal ecosystem architects. These declines have been attributed to climate change, introduction of invasive species, overfishing, and land-based pollution...

Microplastic ingestion by marine fishes has been of particular interest, as many species are the target of commercial fisheries and, thus, have a strong connection with human health. Consumption of microplastic thru seafood is likely to have harmful effects on people globally but mainly on social groups that highly depend on fisheries for self-cons...

Introduction: Hermatypic corals have the capacity to construct the physical reef-framework and maintain the balance of coral reef functionality. However, in the past three decades, coral communities have been menaced by natural and anthropic pressures, resulting in an abrupt coral cover decline, and slow natural recovery. To mitigate coral reef col...

Coral growth is an important metric of coral health and underpins reef-scale functional attributes such as structural complexity and calcium carbonate production. There persists, however, a paucity of growth data for most reef-building regions, especially for coral species whose skeletal architecture prevents the use of traditional methods such as...

Rapidly changing conditions alter disturbance patterns, highlighting the need to better understand how the transition from pulse disturbances to more persistent stress will impact ecosystem dynamics. We conducted a global analysis of the impacts of eleven acute disturbances on reef integrity using the rate of change of coral cover as a measure of d...

Widespread mortality of reef‐building coral substantially reduces the capacity for reef growth and makes available extensive bare substrate areas that in the absence of coral recovery will be eroded by a variety of external and internal bioeroders. Here, we analyze rates of external erosion on six different types of carbonate substrates under in si...

Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) impacts are unprecedented concerning the level of devastation they have imposed on Caribbean coral assemblages. Although SCTLD affects nearly 30 different coral species, it has been particularly lethal for Pseudodiploria strigosa. Mortality rates for this species are estimated to be between 60 and 100% in the...

Noticeable within the Mexican Caribbean is the Arrecife de Puerto Morelos National Park (APMNP), a marine protected area established as an essential component for managing and protecting coral reefs. In June 2019, we conducted a survey in eight shallow reef sites of the APMNP with the purpose of applying a coral reef assessment method, based on bio...

Ocean warming is increasing the incidence, scale, and severity of global-scale coral bleaching and mortality, culminating in the third global coral bleaching event that occurred during record marine heatwaves of 2014-2017. While local effects of these events have been widely reported, the global implications remain unknown. Analysis of 15,066 reef...

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.

The development of coral reefs results from the interaction between ecological and geological processes in space and time. Their difference in scale, however, makes it difficult to detect the impact of ecological changes on geological reef development. The decline of coral cover over the last 50 years, for example, has dramatically impaired the fun...

Understanding how emergent ecological assemblages have diverged from natural states is fundamental in predicting future functioning and services of ecosystems. Coral reefs are of particular concern due to their high susceptibility to anthropogenic stressors. Yet, little is known about their pre-disturbance ranges of natural states, and most reports...

Communities of coral reef fishes are changing due to global warming and overfishing. To understand these changes and inform conservation, knowledge of species diversity and distributions is needed. The western Indian Ocean (WIO) contains the second highest coral reef biodiversity hotspot globally, yet a detailed analysis of the diversity of coral r...

Durante el mes de octubre de 2020, los huracanes Gamma, Delta y Zeta afectaron la costa norte de Quintana Roo. El presente reporte técnico mide el efecto de dichos huracanes sobre arrecifes del norte de Quintana Roo.

This dataset (in Excel format) represents in-situ information on the percentage of benthic cover collected at 714 stations. Seven field campaigns were conducted (2010-2016), in shallow waters (up to 25 m depth) along the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, from Cabo Catoche to Xcalak, as part of the Mesoamerican Reef System. The biotopes of r...

This collection integrates data from the project "Spatial distribution of benthic habitats in shallow water marine ecosystems of the Mexican Caribbean using WorldView-2 (ArrecifeSAM) satellite images (2010-2018)". The study area covers the shallow waters of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, from Cabo Catoche to Xcalak, as part of the Mesoamerican Re...

Comparative analysis of the damages to live coral cover and rugosity caused by hurricanes, bleaching events, diseases, tsunamis, dredging and 10 more risks face by reefs. The analysis compiled data about the severity of the damage, and proposed the extent and frequency of the events to better understand the major risks faced by reefs.

Diseases are major drivers of the deterioration of coral reefs, linked to major declines in coral abundance, reef functionality, and reef-related ecosystems services1-3. An outbreak of a new disease is currently rampaging through the populations of the remaining reef-building corals across the Caribbean region. The outbreak was first reported in Fl...

Despite coral community collapse, the mustard hill coral (Porites astreoides) is a species currently experiencing success throughout the Caribbean. The inshore reefs of Grenada were selected to study the influence of benthic factors on the abundance, size, and coverage of P. astreoides colonies. Surveys of reef communities along established 30 m tr...

The peculiar shallow-water reefs of the Tropical Southwestern Atlantic Ocean have thrived in conditions considered suboptimal (e.g., moderate turbidity, higher level of nutrients, and resuspension of sediments) under the optics of classical coral reefs. Recently, these marginal reefs have been hypothesized to provide climate-change refugia from nat...

In the Caribbean, disease outbreaks have emerged as significant drivers of coral mortality. Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) is a novel white plague-type disease that was first reported off the Florida coast in 2014. This disease affects >20 coral species and is spreading rapidly throughout the Caribbean. In December 2018, SCTLD reached sout...

Mexico harbors several types of coastal ecosystems both in the Atlantic (Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean) and in the Pacific (tropical and subtropical) on which the regional and national socio-economic development depends. They have been studied through several modeling approaches for management, conservation, and necessary ecological studies. In this...

Since 2011, pelagic Sargassum has inundated Caribbean, West African, and northern Brazilian shorelines in increasing volumes. These events are linked to the emergence of a major new Sargassum bloom region in the Atlantic Ocean, and annual high-volume Sargassum beachings are seemingly becoming an established norm. Resultant socio-economic and eco...

A comparison of fish diversity was carried out among 45 sites within four localities in the Mexican Tropical Western Atlantic (TWA) and Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) regions. Several taxonomical and functional diversity indices were considered, and their relationships with the coral cover were investigated in each locality. We found that despite a...

The ecology and structure of many tropical coral reefs have been markedly altered over the past few decades. Although long‐term recovery has been observed in terms of coral cover, it is not clear how novel species configurations shape reef functionality in impaired reefs. The identities and life‐history strategies of the corals species that recover...

Ecological processes on coral reefs commonly have limited spatial and temporal scales and may not be recorded in their long-term geological history. The widespread degradation of Caribbean coral reefs over the last 40 years therefore provides an opportunity to assess the impact of more significant ecological changes on the geological and geomorphic...

Since late 2014, the Mexican Caribbean coast has periodically received massive, atypical influxes of pelagic Sargassum spp. (sargasso). Negative impacts associated with these influxes include mortality of nearshore benthic flora and fauna, beach erosion, pollution, decreasing tourism and high management costs. To understand the dynamics of the sarg...

In 2005, an extreme heatwave hit the Wider Caribbean, followed by 13 hurricanes (including hurricanes Emily and Wilma) that caused significant loss in hard coral cover. However, the drivers of the potential recovery are yet to be fully understood. Based on recent findings in the literature of coral cover recovery in the Mexican Caribbean after the...

Marine protected areas have been established as essential components for managing and protecting coral reefs to mitigate natural and anthropogenic stressors. One noteworthy example within the Mexican Caribbean is the Arrecife de Puerto Morelos National Park (APMNP), where several studies on the coral communities have been carried out since 2006. In...

Coral reefs in the wider Caribbean declined in hard coral cover by ~80% since the 1970s, but spatiotemporal analyses for sub-regions are lacking. Here, we explored benthic change patterns in the Mexican Caribbean reefs through meta-analysis between 1978 and 2016 including 125 coral reef sites. Findings revealed that hard coral cover decreased from...

Since 2011, unusually large quantities of pelagic Sargassum fluitans and S. natans (sargasso) have been washing ashore along the coasts of some African countries and the Greater Caribbean, impacting ecosystems and economies. We estimated biomass and composition of sargasso arriving to a Mexican Caribbean coast from September 2016 until May 2020. In...

Anthropogenic and natural disturbances have modified coral reef ecosystems over the last decades, ultimately, exerting negative impacts on the persistence of the carbonated matrix and the physical function. In 2014, the Caribbean region saw the onset of a new deadly coral disease, often known as the stony coral tissue loss disease. In summer of 201...

Understanding the effects and benefits provided by the design and management of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is crucial for developing cost-effective management actions. We characterized the management and design of no-take zone (NTZ) networks of eight Mexican Caribbean MPAs. To determine protection effectiveness, we followed a two-step approach....

Este reporte técnico estima los daños causados por huracanes a los arrecifes en el Caribe y determina si existe correlación entre las características de los huracanes y de los arrecifes con los daños causados. Los resultados contribuyen a comprender la severidad de los daños causados por los huracanes y a determinar los parámetros que pueden activa...

This technical report estimate hurricane damage to reefs in the Caribbean and identify the correlation between hurricane and reef characteristics and the damage caused. The results contribute to understand the severity of hurricane damage and to define the parameters that can trigger a parametric insurance whose funds are used to repair the damage...

The carbonate budget of a reef describes the net rate of carbonate production resulting from various biologically physically ly-and chemically-driven production and erosion processes. Thus, budget state metrics can provide important information on a reef's growth potential and on the capacity of reefs to sustain key geo-ecological services such as...

Caribbean reef corals have experienced unprecedented declines from climate change, anthropogenic stressors and infectious diseases in recent decades. Since 2014, a highly lethal, new disease, called stony coral tissue loss disease, has impacted many reef-coral species in Florida. During the summer of 2018, we noticed an anomalously high disease pre...

Coral reefs are highly productive and biodiverse ecosystems, that thrive in tropical marine shallow settings. Mexico is one of a few countries, like Costa Rica, Panamá and Colombia, that have coral reefs and coral-dominated bottom communities at both sea sides, in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, these are subjected to several threats. And...

Functional integrity on coral reefs is strongly dependent upon coral cover and coral carbonate production rate being sufficient to maintain three-dimensional reef structures. Increasing environmental and anthropogenic pressures in recent decades have reduced the cover of key reef-building species, producing a shift towards the relative dominance of...

La presente investigación muestra el resultado del esfuerzo de organizaciones de la sociedad civil, junto con científicos mexicanos para mostrar cómo la contaminación plástica impacta a los océanos, la biodiversidad, la alimentación y la economía del planeta y de México; enfocándose en qué manera ésta llega a los peces que se ofrecen en el merca do...

Caribbean reef corals have experienced unprecedented declines from climate change, anthropogenic stressors and infectious diseases in recent decades. Since 2014 a highly lethal, new disease, called stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), has impacted many species in Florida. During the summer of 2018 we noticed an anomalously high disease prevalen...

Caribbean reef corals have experienced unprecedented declines from climate change, anthropogenic stressors and infectious diseases in recent decades. Since 2014 a highly lethal, new disease, called stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), has impacted many species in Florida. During the summer of 2018 we noticed an anomalously high disease prevalen...

Coral reefs are carbon stock in the marine realm. Mexico harbours this valuable ecosystem on both littorals, but the physiography, spatial extension and species composition are sharply different between those in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean (GM-MC) and those in the Pacific littoral (OP). We compiled a database from published and unpublished...