Coral reefs will continue to degrade as disturbances and extreme environmental variability become more severe. While these abiotic factors have strong effects on coral, corals are also affected by surrounding organisms, or their neighbors. The biological responses to disturbance and neighbors are likely interactive, however, few studies address both biotic and abiotic interactions in concert. This thesis consists of two studies testing the interactive effects of disturbance and neighbors on coral survivorship and physiology in Moorea, French Polynesia. The first study was a short-term (14 days), manipulative field experiment that tested how the natural environmental gradient created by submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) affected metabolic rates and endosymbiont physiology of Porites rus, and how this effect was mediated by the neighboring corals. SGD generally benefited P. rus, increasing gross photosynthesis, respiration, endosymbiont densities, and chlorophyll a content along the natural gradient of nutrient enrichment and pH range. Conspecific neighbors (i.e., within 1 cm), however, mediated the relationships with SGD, lowering the photosynthetic and respiration rates from expected values when the coral had no neighbor. The second study used long-term observational data collected from the Moorea Coral Reef Long Term Ecological Research Site to test how the survivorship and growth of Pocillopora spp., currently the dominant coral on Moorean fore reefs, is affected by interactions between neighborhood and major disturbance events (hurricanes, crown-of-thorns seastar, and two bleaching events). Both bleaching events significantly decreased coral growth rates, however, only the most extreme bleaching event affected coral survivorship. Additionally, increasing direct interactions with a neighbor (congeneric, heterogeneric, or macroalgae) decreased coral growth rate. Further, indirect effects of neighbors (i.e., presence within a 0.25 m2 quadrat) decreased both survivorship and growth rate. However, all neighbor effects were dependent on the most recent disturbance event, where increased bleaching severity strengthened the negative effects of neighbors on survivorship and weakened the negative effects of neighbors on growth rate. These studies show that the response of corals to environmental changes will be dependent on the types of neighbors that are near and how they are altering the chemical or physical environment around the coral. These neighbor effects could either exacerbate the effects of the environment or buffer from the effects of the environment. Both studies underscore the importance of considering neighbor effects when predicting the physiologic and demographic responses of corals to the environment.