Juvenile Corals of the Southwestern Puerto Rico

Over the last decades coral reefs in the tropics have been declining by the synergistic effects of anthropogenic and climate change, questioning coral reef resilience. A key process to the resilience of these ecosystems is coral recruitment. The abundance and community structure of juvenile corals have been showed to vary with biological and physical process that operates at different spatial and temporal scales. Studies at different spatial and temporal scales can give a broader understanding of the processes that operate simultaneously to promote coral recruitment and community structure over time and space. Studies with these approaches have been done in Australia and the Caribbean. Revealing that grater variability in juvenile abundance and coral community structure are seeing at smaller scales. Coral reef in Puerto Rico have been affected by diseases and intense bleaching over the last 30 years. In which framebuilders corals have decrease in abundance. This book shows a snap shot of the community structure of juvenile corals for the southwest Puerto Rico where important coral reefs ecosystems are found and have been studied for over the last 50 years.