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Description:
Project Manager:
Stephanie Rosales
Project Years:
2018
2019
Project Summary:
Disease is still a primary threat to both natural recovery and the success of outplants and there is a dire need for both diagnostic and effective intervention tools to manage disease risk. Libro and Vollmer (2016) described a set of 35 differentially expressed transcripts (‘DE genes’) that are constitutively characteristic of resistant and susceptible A. cervicornis genotypes from Panama. We propose to test the hypothesis that a similar transcriptional architecture underlies disease resistant genotypes identified in FY16-17 in nursery stocks in Florida in both Acropora cervicornis and Acropora palmata. In addition, we propose to assist another project with outplant nursery-reared genotypes that we identify as the most resistant or susceptible to disease next to “wild” colonies in the Upper Keys for quarterly monitoring and RNA sample archiving for future comparative analyses. Finally, we plan to compare the microbial/viral community found in diseased versus healthy nursery-fragments tested to get a more “holobiont” understanding of disease resistance in these corals.
Expected Outcome:
Overall, this project directly addresses the new CRCP theme “Coral Restoration and Intervention”, more specifically, objectives 1 and 2 of the section “Improve restoration techniques”, as we propose to conduct strategic research and monitoring on two Endangered Species Act listed coral species (Objective 1) and aim to identify strategies which may improve current restoration efforts (Objective 2) by minimizing coral disease. Finally, this project directly addresses many of the research priorities stated in the Acropora Recovery Plan (NMFS, 2015).
Project Locations:
Project Category:
Other Domestic or Global Project
Project Type:
Closed
Project Status:
Completed
Associated Products:
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