Ronen Liberman

Tel Aviv University | TAU · Department of Zoology

Symbiotic associations, widespread in terrestrial and marine ecosystems, are of considerable ecological importance. Many tropical coral species are holobionts, formed by the obligate association between a cnidarian host and endosymbiotic dinoflagellates of the family Symbiodiniaceae. The latter are abundant on coral reefs from very shallow water do...

Coral reproduction is a fascinating phenomenon that is receiving wide attention around the world. However, it is mostly studied at shallow depths and our understanding of the environmental cues that regulate the timing of coral reproduction is still incomplete. Over 5 years, we monitored the reproduction of a soft coral across its entire depth of o...

Many species across a wide range of taxa and habitats display phenological shifts and differences in response to both environmental gradients and climate change. Moreover, the wide‐scale decline of numerous ecosystems is leading to increasing efforts to identify zones that might serve as natural refuges from various disturbances, including ocean wa...

Coral reefs are threatened worldwide by global climate change, manifested in anthropogenic ocean warming and acidification. Despite the importance of coral sexual reproduction for the continuity of coral reefs, our understanding of the extent of the impact of climate change on coral sexual reproduction, particularly on coral reproductive phenology...

Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs), which comprise the light-dependent communities of corals and other organisms found at depths between 30 and ~150 m, have become a topic that increasingly draws the attention of coral reef researchers. It is well established that after the reef-building scleractinian corals, octocorals are the second most common g...

Mesophotic coral-reef ecosystems (MCEs) are light-dependent communities occurring at 30 to ∼150 m depth in the clear waters of tropical and sub-tropical regions. The extent to which MCEs and shallow benthic populations are connected, and whether coral sexual reproduction is maintained under the mesophotic environmental conditions, are still unclear...