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Building upon work from DeMerlis et al. 2022, we evaluated the changes in gene expression patterns of two reef-building coral species, Acropora cervicornis and Pseudodiploria clivosa, in response to a variable, sublethal temperature treatment, and subsequently exposed them to thermal stress to determine whether the variable treatment influenced their thermal tolerance. We found that the variable treatment caused significant gene expression differences in A. cervicornis, but not P. clivosa, highlighting the need for species-specific treatments.
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DeMerlis et al. 2025
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DeMerlis et al. 2022
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Previous studies have shown that corals from environments with natural temperature variability experience less bleaching when exposed to thermal stress, though it remains unclear if this localized acclimatization or adaptation to variable temperatures can be operationalized for enhancing restoration efforts. To evaluate this approach, fragments from six source colonies of nursery-raised Caribbean staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) were treated with a variable temperature regime (oscillating twice per day from 28 to 31 °C). We found that temperature-treated corals endured heat-stress significantly longer than untreated corals, on the order of several days.
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Since 2014, corals within Florida’s Coral Reef have been dying at an unprecedented rate due to stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). Here we describe the transcriptomic outcomes of three different SCTLD transmission experiments performed at the Smithsonian Marine Station and Mote Marine Laboratory between 2019 and 2020 on the corals Orbicella faveolata and Montastraea cavernosa. We found that O. faveolata and M. cavernosa exhibit an immune, apoptosis, and tissue rearrangement response to SCTLD.
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Traylor-Knowles et al. 2021
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Koch et al. 2021
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Microfragmentation, an asexual propagation technique, is used to produce large numbers of corals for research and restoration. Herein, we developed a streamlined workflow for growth rate quantification of live microfragmented corals using a structured-light 3D scanner to assess surface area (SA) measurements of live tissue over time. We then compared novel 3D and traditional 2D approaches to quantifying microfragment growth rates and assessed factors such as accuracy and speed. We found that the 3D approach has greater capacity for standardization across dissimilar studies, making it a better tool for restoration practitioners striving for consistent and comparable data across users, as well as for those conducting networked experiments, meta-analyses, and syntheses.
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