Document Type

Abstract

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.5343/bms.2024.0122

Publication Title

Bulletin of Marine Science

Volume

101

Issue

1

Pages

548

Conference Name

5th Asia-Pacific Coral Reef Symposium, 19-23 June 2025, Nus, Singapore

Abstract

Widespread coral bleaching and mortality events are becoming increasingly frequent due to rising ocean temperatures, though certain coral species and populations have displayed higher tolerance to elevated emperatures than others. As such, it is of high research priority to identify thermally tolerant coral populations for research and conservation and assess the biological mechanisms allowing these populations to survive exposure to higher temperatures. This research utilized the Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System (CBASS), a portable experimental aquaria system with precise temperature manipulation, to assess the thermal thresholds and heat stress response of two coral species from Summerland Key, FL, USA. Seven genotypes of Acropora cervicornis from Mote Marine Laboratory’s offshore nursery and five Porites astreoides genotypes (wild) each from a documented thermally tolerant and a thermally sensitive population were collected for thermal stress experiments. Fragments from each coral genet were exposed to an 18-hour heat stress assay reaching maximum temperatures ranging from 30–38°C with RNA-seq samples and photosynthetic efficiency (Fv/Fm) measurements collected at multiple time points throughout. The stress response gene regulation was compared between the two coral species to analyze interspecies gene expression pathways and within populations to examine the regulation of gene expression in tolerant vs sensitive individuals. This research provides vital insight into coral thermal vulnerability, examining the time course of molecular pathways of heat stress response and bleaching through a high-resolution genetic analysis to better understand how corals can survive in a warming climate.

Comments

Part of the work: "Abstracts - 5th Asia-Pacific Coral Reef Symposium"

Rights

© The Authors 2025.

This abstract is Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0) License.

Original Publication Citation

Parker, K., Evensen, N., Baums, I., & Barshis, D. (2025). High temporal resolution gene expression analysis of acute heat stress response in Acropora cervicornis and Porites astreoides. Bulletin of Marine Science, 101(1), 548. https://doi.org/10.5343/bms.2024.0122

ORCID

0000-0003-3318-5593 (Evensen), 0000-0003-1510-8375 (Barshis)

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