Abstract Current and future coral reef resilience will depend heavily on larval connectivity between reef systems, enabling populations to recover from repeated disturbance. However, climate warming is rapidly reducing larval dispersal, threatening reef recovery potential following mass bleaching. Using a stochastic biophysical Lagrangian particle‐tracking model, this study examined large‐scale dispersal of coral larvae across the southern Pacific Ocean, focusing on reefs classified using an eco‐evolutionary framework (‘resistance, recovery, avoidance’). Dispersal was simulated across 850 reefs in the southwestern Pacific (2011–2024) for two coral species representing branching or massive corals under three warming scenarios (+1°C, +2.5°C, +4°C), and analysed for source–sink dynamics. We identified key stepping‐stone reefs in the Coral Sea and show that resilient, heat‐tolerant reefs have limited source–sink connectivity within this larger region. Lord Howe Island (LHI) may represent a potential refugium in a future of significant larval dispersal limitation under projected climate warming. However, its limited connectivity constrains its natural contribution to regional larval supply, making it simultaneously a conservation priority and a candidate for managed intervention. Synthesis and applications . Our results demonstrate the importance of integrating connectivity into conservation planning by highlighting that the current marine protected area networks across the southwestern Pacific should be managed as an interconnected network rather than as isolated reserves. Additionally, a prioritisation of the enhanced protection of Coral Sea reefs and LHI is warranted given their importance as stepping‐stone reefs bridging distant reef systems or isolated dispersal, respectively. Finally, the intentional movement of larvae from resilient, heat‐tolerant reefs to other locations could be investigated given their lower relative outward connectivity, with the aim to boost heat tolerance in surrounding reefs. Taken together, these results show that a potential expansion of transboundary management frameworks will be critical to maintain important larval corridors between the southern Great Barrier Reef, New Caledonia and LHI to sustain regional metapopulation resilience under the pressure of a warming world. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the journal’s blog .
Dehont et al. (Wed,) studied this question.