From Australian Oceans Data Network
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Coral recruits demonstrate thermal resilience

Created 17/11/2025

Updated 17/11/2025

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Marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent during summer and pose a significant threat to coral reef ecosystems. Restoration efforts have the potential to support native coral populations and guard them against some degree of environmental change, while global action against climate change takes place. Interspecific hybridization is one approach through which resilient coral stock could be generated for restoration. Here we compared the performance of Acropora kenti and A. loripes hybrid and purebred coral recruits under a simulated thermal stress event. A. kenti eggs were successfully fertilized by A. loripes sperm to produce ‘KL’ hybrids, but no ‘LK’ hybrids could be produced from A. loripes eggs and A. kenti sperm. Despite corals in the elevated treatment accruing thermal stress (>12 degree heating weeks over 2 months) known to result in mass bleaching, both purebred and hybrid recruits showed no signs of stress under the simulated temperature regime, based on the performance indicators survivorship, size, color (a proxy of bleaching), and photochemical efficiency of photosystem II. Comparisons between the hybrids and purebreds studied here must be interpreted with caution because hybrid sample sizes were small. The hybrids did not outperform both of their purebred counterparts for any metrics studied here, demonstrating that there are limitations to the extent to which interspecific hybridization may boost the performance of coral stock. In general, the purebred A. loripes recruits performed best under both ambient and elevated conditions. The performance of the KL hybrid corals was similar to the maternal parental species, A. kenti, or not significantly different to either parental purebred species. The Symbiodiniaceae communities of the KL hybrids were characteristic of their maternal counterparts and may have underpinned the performance differences between the A. kenti/KL hybrid and A. loripes recruits.

Files and APIs

Additional Info

Field Value
Title Coral recruits demonstrate thermal resilience
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/a312fb5e-8502-4c60-a6a2-ede923505c90
Contact Point
Australian Ocean Data Network
reception@aims.gov.au
Reference Period 28/01/2025
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    147.64402770786546,
    -18.8176872952965
  ],
  "type": "Point"
}
Data Portal Australian Oceans Data Network

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Australian Oceans Data Network "Coral recruits demonstrate thermal resilience". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://catalogue.aodn.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/coral-recruits-demonstrate-thermal-resilience