Futures for the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem

The crown-of-thorns starfish, Acanthaster planci, is dramatically damaging the coral on many reefs of the Great Barrier Reef. It is still very uncertain what the result of this will be for the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem as a whole. We used a very simple artificial reef system, implemented in the c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMathematical and computer modelling Vol. 14; pp. 705 - 709
Main Authors van der Laan, J.D., Bradbury, R.H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier Ltd 1990
Subjects
Acanthaster planci
cellular automata
Great Barrier Reef
Acanthaster planci
Great Barrier Reef
cellular automata
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Summary:The crown-of-thorns starfish, Acanthaster planci, is dramatically damaging the coral on many reefs of the Great Barrier Reef. It is still very uncertain what the result of this will be for the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem as a whole. We used a very simple artificial reef system, implemented in the cellular automata formalism, to model this problem and in particular to study the effects of predation and larval dispersal and survival. The results show the two types of behaviour (local outbreaks, wave) which have already been observed on the Great Barrier Reef, but also show a third type of behaviour (pulse). Because of the serious impact a pulse type behaviour might have for the future of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem, we think this possibility should be seriously considered and certainly needs further research.
ISSN:0895-7177
1872-9479
DOI:10.1016/0895-7177(90)90273-P