Student researchers improve coral restoration efforts
Date:
March 24, 2022
Source:
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Summary:
A recent study revealed that exposing rice coral larvae to warmer
temperatures did not improve survival once the coral developed
into juveniles and were exposed to heat stress.
FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A study published recently in Coral Reefsand led by University of Hawai'i
(UH) at Mānoa student researchers revealed that exposing rice coral
larvae to warmer temperatures did not improve survival once the coral
developed into juveniles and were exposed to heat stress.
========================================================================== Climate change-induced ocean warming has reshaped reef ecosystems
as coral bleaching events continue to lead to mass coral die-offs
globally. Coral restoration efforts in Hawai'i are vast and include
selectively breeding more resilient coral, active management of vulnerable areas and outplanting coral reared in a lab.
Shayle Matsuda and Ariana Huffmyer, marine biology graduate students
in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology
(SOEST), were on a mission to optimize efforts to restore corals. While
at the Inclusive Science Communication Symposium, Matsuda met Gyasi
Alexander, undergraduate student at the University of Rhode Island,
and invited him to participate in a summer internship at the Hawai'i
Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) in SOEST.
Making the most of restoration efforts The team's approach was to start
with gametes collected during mass spawning events and rear them to the
larval stage, with the long term goal of planting more coral on the reef.
"Although this process can provide more genetic diversity to the reef
than fragmentation practices alone, it takes considerable time, effort
and capital, and the downstream survival of the corals may be impacted
by ocean warming events," said Matsuda who is now a postdoctoral fellow
at the Shedd Aquarium.
"With this study, we wanted to test whether exposing larvae to different temperatures would both increase larval survival and settlement,
and importantly, if exposure to elevated temperatures as larvae would
lead to increased thermal tolerance, that is, higher survival, at the
juvenile stage." "However, we do not have a good understanding of the
degree, time, and profile of stress required to produce positive carry
over effects and, if the effects are produced, how long they last,"
added Huffmyer, now at the University of Rhode Island.
==========================================================================
In their experiments, the researchers, including HIMB coral ecologist Josh Hancock, found that elevating temperature to simulate future ocean warming
did not improve larval survival and did not improve survival after larvae settled on the seafloor. Instead, their results suggest that rearing
rice coral at ambient temperatures maximizes early life stage survival.
"As climate change intensifies, it is critical that we focus our
restoration and conservation strategies that will have the greatest
positive impact," said Huffmyer. "Since we found that thermal conditioning
did not provide positive benefits for thermal tolerance in recruits in
this species, we suggest that our time and resources are best spent
pursuing other avenues of thermal conditioning and further testing
thermal conditioning scenarios that may produce positive impacts."
Impact of hands-on research experience "Prior to this experience, I
hadn't really known what it felt like to think like a scientist," said Alexander. "The idea of research was definitely intimidating. Ariana and
Shayle helped me immensely by encouraging me to share the observations
and questions that I had, even when I was afraid to use my voice. That comfortability helped me to realize that thinking like a scientist,
feeling like a scientist is really just pursuing the curiosity you feel
behind what you see and take in, especially when you don't have all the
answers right away." After completing his summer internship at HIMB,
Alexander has a clearer direction for his own graduate school pursuits.
"My current goal is to develop a skillset in big data," said Alexander. "I reflected on my work on HIMB and realized how much more effective I
could have been if I had a more robust set of data analysis skills. So
among my next moves, I plan to learn a few programming languages like
R and Python to aid my work in the future and
========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided
by University_of_Hawaii_at_Manoa. Original written by Marcie
Grabowski. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Gyasi Alexander, Joshua R. Hancock, Ariana S. Huffmyer, Shayle B.
Matsuda. Larval thermal conditioning does not improve
post-settlement thermal tolerance in the dominant reef-building
coral, Montipora capitata. Coral Reefs, 2022; DOI:
10.1007/s00338-022-02234-x ==========================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220324104511.htm
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