The researchers analyzed the composition of coral communities at sites in Ningaloo Reef, the Northwest Shelf, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Coral Sea, before and after the 2016 heatwave.
They found that different types of coral had very different responses to the heatwave, with some clearly “winners”, while others were clearly “losers”.
The composition of reef sites before the heatwave largely dictated how the communities changed after the heatwave, while the magnitude of thermal stress was the main driver of the overall change in coral cover, the authors say.
