[Coral-List] ICRS 2020 workshop on rapid thermal tolerance diagnostics

[Daniel Barshis]

Hi Coral-listers,
     Mark Warner, Christian Voolstra, and myself will be convening a
workshop at ICRS on the current state of the field of rapid thermal
tolerance diagnostics and their application to resilience research,
conservation, and management efforts. The workshop format will consist of a
town-hall style discussion with a panel of researchers who are actively
using these types of methodologies in the field. The goal is to share
recently developed technologies and methodological approaches with the ICRS
community and brainstorm about future directions and applications.
     A workshop summary is pasted below. Please feel free to sign up during
your registration for the conference to attend the workshop and please
email me directly if you have experience in this arena and are interested
in participating in the panel. I am not sure of the exact workshop timing,
as the final conference schedule has not yet been released, though believe
the workshop will consist of a special ~30-60minute session during one of
the primary conference days. The workshop is free and open to all ICRS 2020
participants.
Best regards,
dan, mark, and chris

*S5 - Can we empirically determine coral thermal thresholds anywhere in the
world before bleaching actually occurs?*
Daniel Barshis 1, Mark Warner2, Christian R. Voolstra3
1 Old Dominion University (Norfolk, VA, USA)
2 University of Delaware (Lewes, DE, USA)
3 University of Konstanz (Konstanz, Germany)

Researchers have recently identified a number of coral populations, reef
regions, and coral genotypes with enhanced bleaching resistance. These are
critical resources/targets for conservation in a changing climate. However,
there is still no standard procedure for determining bleaching
susceptibility and assessing populations, individuals, and regions for
these resilient characteristics. Published approaches range from:
observational surveys of naturally occurring bleaching severity and
mortality, to multiple months of controlled thermal exposure or years of
field transplantation, to rapid, single/multi-day acute heat shocks. Field
surveys are one of the most informative measures of bleaching
susceptibility, however, natural bleaching events are difficult to predict
(and measure), large-scale bleaching surveys are costly, and monitoring
recovery and mortality is a lengthy process requiring months to years.
Longer-term lab exposures (weeks to months) to elevated temperature are
designed to approximate natural thermal stress events and have a proven
track record in the literature over many decades; yet they require
extensive/expensive aquarium systems capable of sustaining corals for weeks
on end. These systems are not practical in many remote locations where
coral reefs exist, and the approach takes weeks to months for an assessment
of just a single set of individuals from a single population. Experiments
utilizing short-term (0-3 day), acute thermal exposures in remote field
settings show a promising ability to reveal fine-scale differences in
thermal tolerance across small spatial scales, however, the degree to which
these differences mirror ecologically relevant variation remains unknown.
This workshop will convene leading experts in short-term (0-3 day) coral
resilience diagnostics to present recent methodological and technological
advancements and discuss the utility and applicability of short-term
diagnostic approaches to inform research and conservation efforts.

-- 

  Daniel Barshis, Ph.D.
  Assistant Professor
  Department of Biological Sciences
  Old Dominion University
  Mills Godwin Building 302J
  Norfolk, VA 23529
  Office: 757-683-3614
  Lab: 757-683-5755
  Web: www.odu.edu/~dbarshis