One small piece of each of 136 colonies of Stylophora pistillata, 116 colonies of Acropora millepora and 121 colonies of Acropora tenuis was collected from 17 sites along a latitudinal and cross-shelf gradient in the central and southern sections of the Great Barrier Reef between 25 June and 1 August 2002.An unrooted Bayesian phylogeny was created of clade C zooxanthellae in the study, based on rDNA ITS1 sequences. Zooxanthellae clades: C1, C2, C3, Cn (one unnamed C subclade), Cmix (more than one C strain harbored simultaneously), D, A (rare in Indo-Pacific corals).Status of coral colonies after the 2002 bleaching event was recorded as: no signs of bleaching, pale/blotched, white, partially dead.Three measures of thermal environment were applied to each site: Maximum three day temperature from satellite SST maps; Cumulative heat index (number of days that satellite SST was >1 standard deviation above average; Index of historical heat stress at the site represented by first principal component for summer maximum satellite SSTs for 1990 to 2000. Note that higher scores are hotter. Collection sites: Allonby Island, Brampton Island, Charity Reef, Chicken Reef, Credlin Reef, Darley Reef, Daydream Island, Dingo Reef, Girder Reef, Keswick Island, Miall Island, Mumford Island, North Keppel Island, Paul Reef, Stone Island, UN19-165, UN21-056.
To gain an understanding of the geographic distribution of zooxanthella types in 3 coral species along a latitudinal and cross-shelf gradient of the Great Barrier Reef shortly after a major bleaching event.
