Abstract

The Anthropocene threatens a sustainable future for coral reefs, given widespread declines of these ecosystems. Understanding the ecological consequences of climate change is now more urgent than ever. Demographic performance provides a unique lens into how coral individuals within the coral reef ecosystem respond to environmental variations. Taxonomy offers a structured approach to understand population and community dynamics. However, taxonomic resolution of Scleractinian corals continues to be refined for physiological and phylogenetic purposes, while the ecological information provided by fine-scale taxonomy remains controversial. Here, we examine the demographic performance of three coral genera at different taxonomic levels to determine the appropriate taxonomic resolution for assessing coral population dynamics. Growth variation did not differ between species and haplotypes, respectively, but survivorship was lower at the species level, with confounding environmental effects. Comparison between genera revealed differences in both growth and survival, suggesting that the use of morphology and genus level taxonomic resolution provides sufficient information for coral demography. Our results emphasize the ecological significance of coral taxonomic resolution and provide important insights into how population dynamics should be addressed to understand trends and responses to future climate change.