Coral "matchmakers" unlock the secrets to thriving reefs
Meet the coral matchmakers from The University of Miami Rosenstiel School. They traveled to Honduras to collect resilient corals that have shown heat tolerance and disease resistance, offering hope for Florida's coral reefs that are struggling to survive in warming waters.
#coral #coralreef #conservation
From The University of Miami Rosenstiel School
In a groundbreaking effort to combat the devastating impacts of rising ocean temperatures on Florida’s coral reefs, scientists from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science traveled to Honduras to source new coral parents to help Florida’s corals survive climate change.
This scientific initiative aims to study and breed corals from a unique site in Tela Bay, off the northern coast of mainland Honduras, where corals routinely experience temperatures that would normally cause widespread coral bleaching elsewhere. These reefs also experience freshwater impacts from a local lagoon and are often characterized by turbid, low-visibility conditions. Yet corals in the Bay are thriving and appear to have shown tremendous resilience to heat stress and disease. Elkhorn corals, in particular, occur in abundance along sections of the shallowest areas.
Led by Andrew Baker, professor of marine biology and ecology and director of the Coral Reef Futures Lab at the Rosenstiel School, and including three graduate students - Alexandra Wen, Fabrizio Lepiz Conejo, and Cailyn Joseph, worked in collaboration with Antal Borcsok, long-time advocate of the unique value of the reefs in Tela and co-founder and CEO of Tela Marine, a local science organization and aquarium.
Baker’s lab collected hundreds of DNA samples from ten species of corals around the Bay and will now study the genetic factors and key attributes contributing to the resilient nature of corals from this unusually warm reef. They also collected 13 live fragments of elkhorn coral and 21 small brain coral colonies that they brought back to Miami in a world-first attempt to directly breed corals from different countries in an attempt to increase their heat tolerance.
“These species were targeted for their potential heat-tolerance and disease resistance. The elkhorn corals were particularly striking and offer a glimpse of what Florida’s coral reefs used to look like before most of these corals were lost due to bleaching and disease,” said Baker. “We plan to study these corals to understand why they are so resilient, and also try to breed these corals with Florida’s surviving elkhorn corals to produce new baby corals that might be able to survive Florida’s warmer future.”
Producing these new baby corals will depend on the successful spawning of both Honduran and Floridian parent corals later this summer (July through September).
“We hope this project helps highlight the importance of supporting local initiatives in Honduras,” said Borcsok. “We are working hard to protect this invaluable gene bank of resilient corals in Tela Bay, because these disease and heat-tolerant corals could help seed future reefs around the region.”
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