[Coral-List] Molecular Mechanisms of Coral Persistence Within Highly Urbanized Locations in the Port of Miami, Florida

[Dennis Hubbard]

Wow!!!! Good news on the listserve! What a welcome change. It brings back
the line in one of the Jurassic Park missivess, "Nature finds a way".

Denny

On Wed, Jul 28, 2021 at 9:44 AM Coral Morphologic via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> "Molecular Mechanisms of Coral Persistence Within Highly Urbanized
> Locations in the Port of Miami, Florida"
>
> For more than a decade, Coral Morphologic has sought to raise awareness of
> Miami’s urban corals and their potential scientific value. These
> surprisingly resilient corals appear to avoid bleaching and stem disease
> better than their conspecifics offshore on the natural reefs. Over the past
> two years we have been working with scientists at NOAA’s Atlantic
> Oceanographic Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) to explain these differences
> using molecular lab analysis of tissue samples collected in the field. That
> work has culminated in ‘Molecular Mechanisms of Coral Persistence
> Within Highly Urbanized Locations in the Port of Miami, Florida‘  (Rubin et
> al. 2021) published (open access) in Frontiers in Marine Science:
>
> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.695236/full
>
> We found that the Symmetrical Brain Corals (*Pseudodiploria strigosa*)
> living in the urban environment (specifically 0-2m deep alongside MacArthur
> Causeway and Star Island in Miami) were predominantly colonized by the
> thermally-tolerant zooxanthellae *Durusdinium*. This was surprising
> because *P.
> strigosa* isn't well known to host this species of zooxanthellae across its
> range in the Caribbean/Western Atlantic, making these observations here in
> Miami notable.
>
> Beyond the heat tolerant symbionts, *P. strigosa* living in the urban
> environment were also found to be producing proteins and enzymes known to
> identify and digest potentially pathogenic invaders. These proteins could
> be a two-fold benefit to the coral since disease-causing microbes can be
> digested as food before they can infect the coral. The urban marine
> environments around Miami often have high concentrations of phytoplankton
> and turbidity in the water, along with high bacterial concentrations that
> frequently require ‘no swim’ public health advisories. The ability to
> capture and extract more energy from food could potentially enhance its
> health and provide sustenance during times of bleaching.
>
> These findings from a single species of urban coral in Miami’s coastal
> environment suggest further investigation is warranted in the 25+ other
> Scleractinian coral species that have self-recruited to the City’s concrete
> and riprap shorelines. It also demonstrates how the
> human-made hydrogeologic conditions around PortMiami appear to serve as a
> stress-hardening evolutionary gauntlet selecting for corals that are better
> adapted for life in the Anthropocene. These are not survivors, but
> pioneers.
>
> Tune in and follow along on the Coral City Camera (www.coralcitycamera.com
> )
> where we are currently monitoring and growing fragments of urban corals on
> nursery frames. We are currently collaborating with the University of Miami
> to test the resilience of staghorn coral genotypes grown by their
> Rescue-a-Reef program in offshore nurseries and transplanted to this
> near-shore marginal environment at PortMiami.  As always we are happy to
> collaborate, so feel free to reach out with any ideas you may have where
> the CCC and/or this urban coral site could benefit your research.
>
> Cheers,
> Colin Foord
>
> Coral Morphologic
> Coral City Camera
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-- 
Dennis Hubbard - Emeritus Professor: Dept of Geology-Oberlin College
Oberlin OH 44074
(440) 935-4014

* "When you get on the wrong train.... every stop is the wrong stop"*
 Benjamin Stein: "*Ludes, A Ballad of the Drug and the Dream*"