“Context: Tropical coral reef environments provide a wide variety of goods and ecosystem services but are experiencing growing pressure from coastal development and tourism. Assessing the status of reef communities along gradients of human pressure is therefore necessary to predict recovery and resilience capacity of reefs.
Conclusions: Benthic foraminifera can be used as bio-indicators in Hawaiian reefs, providing an easy and fast-to-apply method for assessing short-term changes in water quality and stress sources. Implementing benthic foraminifera studies within existing long-term monitoring programs of Hawaiian reefs can be beneficial for conservation efforts.” read more