Credit: Joseph Pawlik, UNCWAs if corals didn’t have enough to contend with in nuisance seaweeds, another aggressive neighbour is moving in. Like seaweeds, sponges use an arsenal of toxins, mucus, shading, and smothering to kill nearby coral colonies and then, to add insult to injury, go ahead and grow on their skeletons. Furthermore, a recent survey of coral reefs across the Caribbean has shown that overfishing removes the predators of sponges, greatly increasing the threat to an already weakened population of corals. Headed by Dr. Joseph Pawlik at UNC Wilmington, the research team surveyed reefs from 12 countries across the Caribbean, where the combined effects of warming seawater temperatures, storms, and diseases have already decimated coral populations
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