From Australian Oceans Data Network
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Differential impacts of light on coral phenotypic responses to acute heat stress

Created 17/11/2025

Updated 17/11/2025

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Reef building corals are in global decline due to climate change and other pressures. Yet, corals show wide variation in physiological responses to heat stress. The influence of light is often dismissed when characterising variation in coral thermal tolerance. Hence, we investigate how light levels affect the photochemical and bleaching responses that typically inform coral thermal tolerance in acute heat-stress experiments using corals from two habitats. Despite natural variations in temperature regimes between sites, both coral populations responded similarly to acute heat-stress across seasons. The decline in the photochemical response (Fv/Fm) after heat stress (winter: +9 C, summer: + 7.5 C) was small on average (≤ 6 %) indicating no light stress, but consistently greater in high light (16–24 Daily light integrals, DLI) compared to low light treatments (4–11 DLI). Fv/Fm responses varied per genotype (+3 % to - 50 % relative change) and despite small declines in Fv/Fm, all genotypes lost pigment in summer (10 % to 45 % relative change in tissue colour) and paled significantly irrespective of light treatment. These results highlight the complexity of the bleaching response to the primary drivers of temperature and light stress. Further research is needed to understand how light levels affect acute heat-stress responses across studies particularly when thermal tolerance is based on single phenotypes. Incor­porating light as a contributing factor to thermal stress indicators will advance our understanding of coral temperature thresholds, to improve coral bleaching predictions based on ubiquitous environmental drivers.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Differential impacts of light on coral phenotypic responses to acute heat stress
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/2339a97e-2ec6-4daf-a225-580131f22b5f
Contact Point
Australian Ocean Data Network
reception@aims.gov.au
Reference Period 03/02/2025
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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Data Portal Australian Oceans Data Network

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on Australian Oceans Data Network "Differential impacts of light on coral phenotypic responses to acute heat stress". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://catalogue.aodn.org.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/differential-impacts-of-light-on-coral-phenotypic-responses-to-acute-heat-stress