Impacts of bleaching on host sea anemones and associated anemonefish in Southeast Asian coral reefs

Thermally-induced bleaching events pose significant impacts on coral reefs but current understanding of the bleaching effects on host sea anemones and mutualistic anemonefishes is limited compared to those of scleractinian corals and their associates. Such information is especially lacking in Southeast Asia, despite the region harbouring the highest diversity of host anemones and anemonefishes. In this study, we documented bleaching prevalence and recovery of host anemones and quantified changes in anemonefish abundance at two coral reefs in Singapore during and after the 2016 mass bleaching event. Of the 260 host anemones surveyed, 16