REPORT Coral reefs respond to repeated ENSO events with increasing resistance but reduced recovery capacities in the Lakshadweep archipelago S. Yadav 1,2 • T. Alcoverro 3,1 • R. Arthur 1,3 Received: 27 January 2018 / Accepted: 16 September 2018 Ó Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract The resilience of reefs to repeated, increasingly frequent thermal disturbance is a dynamic balance between resistance and recovery pathways. The Lakshadweep archipelago in the central Indian Ocean has experienced three El Nin ˜o Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events in 1998, 2010 and 2016. Using a multi-decadal monitoring of 6 shallow reefs, we estimated reef resistance and coral recovery after each of these bleaching events. Even as the severity of each ENSO event increased over time, coral mortality decreased from 87% post-1998 to 44% after 2010 and 31% after 2016. In contrast, benthic recovery after 2010 was more protracted than after 1998, with a fourfold decrease in recovery rates between the two time periods. This has resulted in a 40% decline in absolute coral cover in the last 2 decades from 51.6% in 1998 to 11% in 2017. We examined the demographic and compositional mech- anisms underlying these two recovery trajectories by monitoring coral recruitment, juvenile, and young adult compositions for 5 yr after 1998 and 2010. While coral juvenile densities were comparable after each of these disturbances, densities of fast-growing Acroporids had reduced from [ 1m -2 post-1998 to 0.09 m -2 post-2010. This was reflected in the composition of coral communities in 2003 and 2015, which differed in its dominant coral taxa, with a dramatic decline in Acropora and an increase in the cover of Porites by 2015. While the dominance of resistant taxa like Porites signals a shift to a system adapting to recurrent thermal anomalies, the reduction in fast-growing, habitat-forming corals like Acropora is driving a major decline in recovery rates with time. Given the frequency of current warming events, the increased reef resistance over the last 2 decades is likely not sufficient to also ensure gains in coral cover in Lakshadweep’s reefs. Keywords Bleaching Á Scleractinian corals Á Life-history strategy Á Community composition Á Reef recovery Á Indian Ocean Introduction As climate change modifies the frequency and intensity of large disturbances (Diffenbaugh et al. 2017; Easterling et al. 2000), understanding how benthic communities respond and adapt to this changing regime is critical for effective conservation and management. How the entire coral reef community responds will depend heavily on the life-history traits of its constituent species, as they trade off competitive abilities against stress-tolerant and r-selective strategies (Southwood 1988). In this context, the ability to resist pulse disturbances and survive in suboptimal envi- ronments (through adaptation, tolerance, or storage, for instance) will likely be favored over other processes, like growth and reproduction (Done 1999; Darling et al. 2012). By this measure, we should expect the overall community Topic Editor Dr. Mark J. A. Vermeij Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-018-1735-5) contains supple- mentary material, which is available to authorized users. & S. Yadav shreyay@hawaii.edu 1 Nature Conservation Foundation, 3076/5, 4th Cross, Gokulam Park, Mysore, India 2 Marine Biology Graduate Program, University of Hawai‘i at Ma ¯noa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA 3 Centre d’Estudis Avanc ¸ats de Blanes (CEAB-CSIC), C/Acc. Cala Sant Francesc 14, 17300 Blanes, Spain 123 Coral Reefs https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-018-1735-5