Reef-building corals can shift from autotrophic to heterotrophic feeding during episodic heatwaves, which may have mitigating effects on thermal stress. It is yet unclear to what extent this could occur during early life stages of corals, and how this affects survival. We exposed settlers (primary polyps) of the Caribbean Golf ball coral Favia fragum to a lab-controlled heatwave lasting 48 days under two feeding regimes (36 ve...

Light is considered an important co-factor in causing thermal bleaching in photosymbiotic corals. To quantify the effects of light strength on thermal bleaching, colonies of the stony coral Stylophora pistillata were experimentally subjected to a gradual increase in temperature (1 °C per 4 days) under two irradiance levels: 100 and 500 µmole quanta m−2 s−1. Corals kept under the same irradiance levels at a constant temperature...

The massive die-off of the sea urchin Diadema antillarum in 1983–1984 is one the main reasons for low coral recruitment and little coral recovery in the Caribbean. As the natural recovery of D. antillarum is slow to non-existent, multiple restoration studies have been attempted. There are currently three different approaches to obtain individuals for restocking: the translocation of wild-collected juveniles or adults, lab-rear...

Sponges are ubiquitous components of various deep‐sea habitats, including cold water coral reefs, and form deep‐sea sponge grounds. Although the deep sea is generally considered to be a food‐limited environment, these ecosystems are known to be hotspots of biodiversity and carbon cycling. To assess the role of sponges in the carbon cycling of deep‐sea ecosystems, we studied the carbon budgets of six dominant deep‐sea sponges o...