Indo-Pacific Coral Diseases: Diversity, Impacts and Solutions
A special issue of Diversity (ISSN 1424-2818). This special issue belongs to the section "Marine Diversity".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2024 | Viewed by 7216
Special Issue Editor
2. MaRHE Center (Marine Research and High Education Center), Magoodhoo Island, Faafu Atoll 12030, Maldives
Interests: coral diseases; coral reef ecology; coral restoration; biodiversity; symbiosis; hydrozoans taxonomy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Coral reefs are among the most productive and biologically diverse ecosystems on Earth. Beautiful and fascinating, unfortunately, they are under increasing threat from multiple stressors, including the spread of diseases. In recent decades, an increasing number of new syndromes and severe disease outbreaks has been described to impact coral reefs worldwide. Disease outbreaks are also expected to intensify, as climate change induced stress along with other anthropogenic activities are likely to accelerate coral susceptibility to disease as well as pathogens abundance and virulence. In particular, thermal stress has been identified as a major trigger for disease, although, human activities may alter reef environment by increasing nutrient availability, organic matter, sewage effluent, introduced chemicals, plastic pollution and tourism.
However, the effort to investigate Indo-Pacific coral diseases has been, until now, disproportionately low, especially considering that the Indo-Pacific hosts 91% of the world’s coral reefs. So far, the cumulative effect is unprecedented, and all the efforts carried out by researchers have not been successful in discovering the relevant agents and taking the appropriate countermeasures. Moreover, few scattered solutions have been proposed to reduce or slow down the progression of many coral diseases, however, most of them have not yielded and effective solution on a global scale yet.
This Special Issue aims to assess the diversity of Indo-Pacific coral diseases, inspiring the description of their etiology, the putative pathogens from morphological and molecular point of view, and the related impacts on coral communities. Moreover, the availability of useful, handy and effective underwater mitigation tools is now the new frontier for alleviate the effects caused by marine diseases. For this reason, we welcome researches focused on the development and testing of mitigation tools and techniques, monitoring protocols and conservation measures. Particular attention will be given to works that use multidisciplinary approaches to in-depth clarify several aspects of coral diseases affecting Indo-pacific coral reefs.
Dr. Simone Montano
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diversity is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- pathogens
- invertebrates
- prevalence & incidence
- vector & reservoir
- mortality
- impacts
- mitigation tools
- climate change
- monitoring protocol
- ecological assessment
