Despite the Arabian Gulf hosting the most heat-tolerant corals in the world, coral restoration in the region remains constrained by the lack of species−specific husbandry guidelines. We fragmented donor colonies of seven common Gulf scleractinian species into five size classes and reared 1,540 ramets for 130 days in a land−based nursery under three controlled light-color treatments (blue, green, and white). Daily skeletal grow...

Increasing trends of coral mortality are a challenge to coral reef management worldwide, and a need exists to identify the causes and pathways involved. Pathology is useful to help decipher potential causes of mortality in animals, because it illuminates agents associated with lesions and gives insights on the nature of how a host responds to said agents. To better understand the nature of threats facing corals in the Arabian...

Documented biodiversity associated with offshore oil and gas platforms has led to growing interest in their potential conversion to artificial reefs under Rigs-to-Reefs (RTR) programmes following decommissioning. In this study, we assessed fish assemblages associated with offshore platforms in Qatar’s Al Khalij oilfield for the first time, using remotely operated vehicle (ROV) video surveys. Species diversity, abundance, and b...

Introduction Artificial substrates are increasingly employed in marine ecosystems to support benthic communities by providing habitat and enhancing biodiversity, particularly in areas where natural substrates are limited. Understanding the ecological role of these structures is essential for conservation and management, especially in regions undergoing industrial development, such as offshore oil and gas areas. Materials and m...

The Persian Gulf is a thermally extreme environment in which reef corals have adapted to survive through temperature ranges that would be lethal to corals from other regions. Despite offering a unique opportunity to better understand how corals from other regions may adapt in the future, through a changing climate, much of the Gulf coral and fish communities remain to be described. In the southwestern Gulf nation of Qatar few...

Current seawater temperatures around the northeastern Arabian Peninsula resemble future global forecasts as temperatures > 35 °C are commonly observed in summer. To provide a more fundamental aim of understanding the structure of wild populations in extreme environmental conditions, we conducted a population genetic study of a widespread, regional endemic table coral species, Acropora downingi , across the northeastern Arabian...

Conservation and management of marine biodiversity depends on biomonitoring of marine habitats, but current approaches are resource‐intensive and require different approaches for different organisms. Environmental DNA (eDNA) extracted from water samples is an efficient and versatile approach to detecting aquatic animals. In the ocean, eDNA composition reflects local fauna at fine spatial scales, but little is known about the e...

The influence of submarine groundwater discharges ( SGD ) on the dynamics of coastal ecosystems is receiving increasing scientific attention, although our knowledge of this issue still remains insufficient. Understanding the ecological response of coastal ecosystems to SGD dynamics is important in order to evaluate and predict changes in coastal communities. The aim of the present study was to characterize the effect of ground...

As part of a wider study on the settlement and recruitment of Chthamalus spp. in Europe, this study investigated whether chthamalid cyprids can be separated by length on a European scale. Variation in cyprid length with latitude and temporal variation at selected localities were also examined. The lengths of cyprids collected between 1996 – 1999 on nine rocky shores in Europe are reported. Elminius modestus cyprids were found...