[Coral-List] August 13 and 20 Coral Collaboration Seminars

[Robin Garcia - NOAA Affiliate]

Hello everyone,

We are lucky to have two Coral Collaboration seminars next month!

*August 13 - Coral Eco-immunity in a Disease Landscape of Unknowns*
Nikki Traylor-Knowles, PhD, Assistant Professor of Marine Biology and
Ecology at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and
Atmospheric Sciences will present the following:

*Coral Eco-immunity in a Disease Landscape of Unknowns:* Coral pathogens
are known to be incredibly hard to diagnose, which presents a big challenge
for coral reef practitioners. How can you measure coral reef health if you
can't make a clear disease diagnosis? In this seminar, Dr. Traylor-Knowles
will discuss what her laboratory, The Cnidarian Immunity Laboratory, is
doing to tackle this issue. She will discuss the use of transcriptomics and
16s microbiome sequencing in identifying core coral immune genes involved
in disease response, despite discrepancies in disease identification. She
will also discuss their work analyzing the disease response of the algal
symbiont, Symbiodiniaceae. Lastly, she will present some recently published
work on the role of the coral genotype and immune function. In summation
this seminar will present meaningful information for understanding the
coral immune system, how it responds to disease, and what the future holds
for coral disease immuno-transcriptomics and coral health diagnostics.

*August 20  - Testing Machine Learning Tool’s (CoralNet) Capacity to
Classify Coral Bleaching*
Abigail Schulz, NOAA EPP/MSI Scholar from the University of Texas A&M
Corpus Christi will present the following:

*Testing Machine Learning Tool’s (CoralNet) Capacity to Classify Coral
Bleaching**:* Coral bleaching is a phenomena in which environmental
stressors disturb the symbiotic relationship between corals and
zooxanthellae, causing corals to lose their color and turn a stark white.
Advancements in artificial intelligence, however, can be used to quantify
bleaching events by monitoring the health state of reefs and the level of
bleaching present. CoralNet is a collaborative, online image and data
repository
that enables users to upload and annotate benthic imagery, and has the
capacity to utilize machine learning approaches to automate image
classification. Here, we used CoralNet to compare the accuracy of two
different automated classifiers in annotating imagery, one that identifies
bleaching at the species level and one that only distinguishes between
non-bleached coral and bleached coral. The classifiers were each trained on
the same 5,458 images from the Hawaii coral bleaching events, and then
given a set number of images for which their annotations were compared.
Results have yet to be drawn from the testing phase between the two robots.

Meeting Details:
Date: Thursday, August 13, 2020 and Thursday, August 20, 2020
Time: 4-5 pm Eastern Time
Location:  Online (See AdobeConnect information below)

*AdobeConnect information: *

1. To join the meeting: http://noaacsc.adobeconnect.com/coralscollab/
2. Click the microphone at the top of the screen to connect audio.

*Robin Garcia*
Communications Director, NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program
Pronouns: she/her/hers
CSS employee as part of Lynker/CSS Team
On contract to OCM
Office: 240-533-0776
Cell: 202-256-6615
Web <https://coralreef.noaa.gov/> | Facebook
<https://www.facebook.com/uscoralreefgov/> | Twitter
<https://twitter.com/NOAACoral>

*The NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program's mission is to protect,
conserve, and restore coral reef resources by maintaining healthy ecosystem
function.*