text: Van Woesik et al . write that their findings suggest that the ecosystem they studied was "able to absorb the thermal stressors without undergoing change to a less desirable state," citing the similar findings of Holling (1973) and Scheffer and Carpenter (2003)," as well as the fact that " Acropora populations had fully recovered seven years after an extreme thermal-stress event in Palau (Golbuu et al ., 2007)," plus the fact that in the Arabian Gulf, "Riegl and Purkis (2009) showed that Acropora assemblages could recover from thermal-stress cycles occurring every fifteen years."