Systematic review and meta-analysis of 50 years of coral disease research visualized through the scope of network theory

Abstract

Coral disease research encompasses five decades of undeniable progress. Since the first descriptions of anomalous signs, we have come to understand multiple processes and environmental drivers that interact with coral pathologies. In order to gain a better insight into the knowledge we already have, we explored how key topics in coral disease research have been related to each other using network analysis. We reviewed 719 papers and conference proceedings published from 1965 to 2017. From each study, four elements determined our network nodes: (1) studied disease(s); (2) host genus; (3) marine ecoregion(s) associated with the study site; and (4) research objectives. Basic properties of this network confirmed that there is a set of specific topics comprising the majority of research. The top five diseases, genera, and ecoregions studied accounted for over 48% of the research effort in all cases. The community structure analysis identified 15 clusters of topics with different degrees of overlap among them. These clusters represent the typical sets of elements that appear together for a given study. Our results show that while some coral diseases have been studied considering multiple aspects, the overall trend is for most diseases to be understood under a limited range of approaches, e.g., bacterial assemblages have been considerably studied in Yellow and Black band diseases while immune response has been better examined for the aspergillosis-Gorgonia system. Thus, our challenge in the near future is to identify and resolve potential gaps in order to achieve a more comprehensive progress on coral disease research.

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Citation

BibTeX citation:

@online{m._montilla2019,
  author = {M. Montilla, Luis and Ascanio, Alfredo and Verde, Alejandra
    and Cróquer, Aldo},
  title = {Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of 50 Years of Coral
    Disease Research Visualized Through the Scope of Network Theory},
  date = {2019-06-04},
  url = {https://www.luismmontilla.com/papers/montilla2019b/},
  doi = {https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7041},
  langid = {en},
  abstract = {Coral disease research encompasses five decades of
    undeniable progress. Since the first descriptions of anomalous
    signs, we have come to understand multiple processes and
    environmental drivers that interact with coral pathologies. In order
    to gain a better insight into the knowledge we already have, we
    explored how key topics in coral disease research have been related
    to each other using network analysis. We reviewed 719 papers and
    conference proceedings published from 1965 to 2017. From each study,
    four elements determined our network nodes: (1) studied disease(s);
    (2) host genus; (3) marine ecoregion(s) associated with the study
    site; and (4) research objectives. Basic properties of this network
    confirmed that there is a set of specific topics comprising the
    majority of research. The top five diseases, genera, and ecoregions
    studied accounted for over 48\% of the research effort in all cases.
    The community structure analysis identified 15 clusters of topics
    with different degrees of overlap among them. These clusters
    represent the typical sets of elements that appear together for a
    given study. Our results show that while some coral diseases have
    been studied considering multiple aspects, the overall trend is for
    most diseases to be understood under a limited range of approaches,
    e.g., bacterial assemblages have been considerably studied in Yellow
    and Black band diseases while immune response has been better
    examined for the aspergillosis-Gorgonia system. Thus, our challenge
    in the near future is to identify and resolve potential gaps in
    order to achieve a more comprehensive progress on coral disease
    research.}
}

For attribution, please cite this work as:

M. Montilla, Luis, Alfredo Ascanio, Alejandra Verde, and Aldo Cróquer. 2019. “Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of 50 Years of Coral Disease Research Visualized Through the Scope of Network Theory.” PeerJ, June 4. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7041.