[Coral-List] first captive breeding of ridged cactus coral

[Benjamin Cowburn]

Hyperbole are what the media do best! It happens every day. Here in the UK,
a chief medical scientist said with lots of caveats that '*SOME *of the
lockdown measures *COULD* continue for *UP TO* 6 months time'. Headlines in
the paper the next day: UK WILL BE IN LOCKDOWN FOR 6 MONTHS. I don't know
how we as scientists can combat this misrepresentation! At least they are
hyperbole and not bare faced lies e.g. 'I always new this was a pandemic'
or 'Let's inject people with disinfectant'
This is a debate I'd like to continue, if people think there is any use in
it!
Cheers,
Benjo

On Fri, 24 Apr 2020 at 15:35, Keri O'Neil via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Thank you for sharing the article Doug.  I can provide a little more
> background from the scientific perspective.  The corals that have been
> releasing larvae are Mycetophyllia lamarkiana.  We have also been
> monitoring M. aliciae but no larvae have been released from them yet. These
> corals have been held ex-situ for 18 months at this point.  They were
> collected as part of the Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Coral Rescue
> Project led by Florida FWC and NOAA Fisheries.  We have held all
> Mycetophyllia we have close together in a recirculating aquarium system,
> hoping that if sperm was released it would have enough residence time in
> the tank to fertilize nearby corals before being removed by filtration.
> The parent corals are held in greenhouses and get natural sunlight (in the
> Tampa area, which is close in timing but not exactly the same as the
> Florida Keys).  We manually change their water temperature setting monthly
> to mimic a 10 year average of water temperature from data from Key Largo,
> FL, with extremes highs removed such as major bleaching years.  They do get
> natural moonlight, but there is a fair amount of light contamination from
> nearby streetlights and even small LEDs in the greenhouse on various
> electronics.  Soon we will look at the recruits from this event to confirm
> that cross fertilization did occur, as genetic samples have also been
> collected from parent colonies in this project.
>
> Also we definitely did not intend to imply that no work had ever been done
> on MLAM, and can’t control the exact wording in all of the news articles,
> so I do apologize if we did not pay appropriate tribute to previous
> investigations in this species.  We have read the thesis by José Antonio
> Morales Tirado from Ernesto Weil’s lab in 2006 and also Alina’s coral
> reproduction paper from 1986, and these were critical to us even knowing
> when to start to look for larvae in these species, but I think we can all
> admit there is still a lot to document and learn about Mycetophyllia.
> Although this one event certainly will not “save coral reefs”, we are
> simply hopeful that we can continue to keep an ex-situ population of corals
> with a high level of genetic diversity, and promote annual spawning even
> when those corals are held ex-situ for an extended period of time.
> Although no one wants to be faced with pulling corals off of the reef to
> ensure their future, we believe this type of intervention can in fact help
> prevent localized extinction of some species in Florida, and preserve
> genetic diversity in the population, most notably in the wake of Stony
> Coral Tissue Loss Disease.
>
> As Les said, we are celebrating our small success.
>
> With regards,
>
> Keri O'Neil
>
>
>
>
>
> Keri O'Neil, MS
> Manager & Senior Scientist, Coral Conservation Program
> 701 Channelside
> Drive
> Tampa, FL 33602
> P:813-425-1679
> W:
> flaquarium.org
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