Correction to: Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2084-4Published online 9 March 2020

There are two amendments to the version of this article initially published. The Fig. 2 caption has been updated to specify the data sources described in the Methods. Further, an update has been made to Supplementary Figure 10b–e to correct an error that resulted from a mismatch of units between centimetres and millimetres in the original code. We also note that this simulation tested sampling of a coral with linear extension rate of 20 mm y–1 across an extreme range of edge thicknesses from 1–7 mm, but that the realistic range of edge thicknesses for our study is 2.5–4 mm.

The changes have been made to the online version of the article.