| NSF Org: |
OCE Division Of Ocean Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | November 18, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | November 18, 2014 |
| Award Number: | 1503483 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
David Garrison
OCE Division Of Ocean Sciences GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | December 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | November 30, 2016 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $177,913.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $177,913.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
11200 SW 8TH ST MIAMI FL US 33199-2516 (305)348-2494 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
11200 SW 8th st Miami FL US 33199-0001 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | BIOLOGICAL OCEANOGRAPHY |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
Coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse and economically important ecosystems on the planet. However, coral reefs are in a state of global decline due to effects of climate change, disease outbreaks, and other stressors. Mass coral bleaching events, a breakdown of the association between corals and their symbiotic algae, are predicted to become more frequent and severe in response to climate change, and it is expected that subsequent disease outbreaks will become more common. Beginning in August 2014, nearly all coral species in the Florida Reef Tract have undergone severe bleaching, in some cases followed by coral mortality and/or disease outbreaks. This widespread, thermal-induced event presents a unique time-sensitive opportunity to explore the mechanisms underpinning the patterns of coral bleaching, disease, and recovery. The mechanisms linking patterns of bleaching, disease, mortality, and recovery remain relatively unexplored. This research will explore the influences that genotype combinations of host polyps, their algal symbionts, and associated bacterial have on bleaching/disease likelihood and recovery/mortality predisposition of coral specimens. By providing a mechanistic understanding of the processes that underlie coral bleaching and subsequent recovery this research will contribute to measures in support of preserving this invaluable natural resource. The study will further involve students from diverse backgrounds as well as provide project internship opportunities for high school students. A web based radio blog will disseminate project results and other relevant developments to the broad audiences
Mass coral bleaching events are predicted to become more frequent and severe in response to climate change, and it is expected that subsequent disease outbreaks will become more common. The lack of a baseline genetic datasets for coral holobionts prior to previous natural bleaching events has hindered our understanding of recovery patterns and physiological tolerance to thermal stress, also known as coral bleaching. An extensive pre-thermal stress baseline of genotypic identity of coral hosts, Symbiodinium, and associated bacterial community offers a unique opportunity to analyze changes associated with current bleaching event along the Florida coastline and to document holobiont compositions most and least resistant/resilient to bleaching and disease. Repeated sampling of the same coral colonies will allow the investigators to compare holobiont composition before, during and after bleaching of both healthy and diseased individuals. This bleaching event is a time-sensitive natural experiment to examine the dynamics of microbes (Symbiodinium and bacteria) associated with affected colonies, including their potential influence on disease susceptibility and resistance of reef corals. This effort would constitute the first time that high throughput sequencing of coral, Symbiodinium endosymbiont, and the coral-associated bacterial community genotypes are together used to explain patterns of disease, recovery, and mortality following natural bleaching. This study will likely change the way investigators study emerging wasting diseases of keystone species that define marine benthic communities.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The health of coral reefs is a global concern and has been the subject of widespread, global concern. Both coral bleaching and coral diseases have been documented as large contributors to the decline of reef ecosystems. More than a decade ago it was predicted the occurrence of more frequent coral bleaching events as a result of global warming, and for the first time that prediction materialized as a true event over the last couple years. In 2014 and 2015 coral reefs in the Florida Reef Tract (FRT) experienced consecutive anomalous increases of seawater temperature that caused mass bleaching events over two years in a row for the first time in these ecosystems. We had, based on a rapid response to the FRT Fall 2014 mass coral bleaching event, the opportunity to investigate the links between coral bleaching and coral disease at the process level and to compare coral and coral-associated microbial physiology on a pre- and post- bleaching basis. In this RAPID award we proposed specifically to explore the influences of coral genotype, mutualistic algal strain(s), and coral-associated bacterial community composition on bleaching/disease likelihood and recovery using the high resolution of next generation DNA sequencing. We were able to test the overall hypothesis that corals and their symbionts/associates are indeed building-block communities that are rearranged in response to environmental change and that some combinations fostered resistance and rapid recovery while others reflected slow recovery. While these results were perceived as a nugget of hope in terms of coral recovery from bleaching, we quickly learned that new symbiotic combinations providing resistant to bleaching where extremely affected by disease outbreak a few months after the second bleaching event in 2015. While some corals seemed to be quickly adjusting to the annually consecutive thermal events and thus become resistant to bleaching, the accumulative thermal stress effect appeared to have weakened the immunological capability of these corals and thus become vulnerable to disease development. The question now extends on to what is the additive effect of consecutive annual hyper-thermal stress, already happening, on the physiology of corals and its implications to their response during recovery not only to the abiotic environment but also to biotic factors such as pathogenic infections. Alarmingly unexpected, it is that these data show that corals affected by consecutive thermal anomalies are more susceptible to disease regardless of their acquired resistance capacity to bleaching.
Beyond the intellectual merit, this project supported young scientists, from high school to undergraduate and graduate students, giving them multidisciplinary training at the interface of eco-physiology and coral microbiology. Research also included training of minority and female undergraduate and graduate students and provided opportunities for students to present some of the work associated to this grant in national and international conferences, featuring for instance the attendance of five students to the International Coral Reef Symposium held in Hawaii in 2016.
Last Modified: 04/03/2017
Modified by: Mauricio Rodriguez-Lanetty
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