Enhancing the heat tolerance of reef-building corals to future warming
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering (BESE) DivisionMarine Science Program
Red Sea Research Center (RSRC)
Date
2021-08-20Online Publication Date
2021-08-20Print Publication Date
2021-08Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/670733
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Reef-building corals thriving in extreme thermal environments may provide genetic variation that can assist the evolution of populations to rapid climate warming. However, the feasibility and scale of genetic improvements remain untested despite ongoing population declines from recurrent thermal stress events. Here, we show that corals from the hottest reefs in the world transfer sufficient heat tolerance to a naïve population sufficient to withstand end-of-century warming projections. Heat survival increased up to 84% when naïve mothers were selectively bred with fathers from the hottest reefs because of strong heritable genetic effects. We identified genomic loci associated with tolerance variation that were enriched for heat shock proteins, oxidative stress, and immune functions. Unexpectedly, several coral families exhibited survival rates and genomic associations deviating from origin predictions, including a few naïve purebreds with exceptionally high heat tolerance. Our findings highlight previously uncharacterized enhanced and intrinsic potential of coral populations to adapt to climate warming.Citation
Howells, E. J., Abrego, D., Liew, Y. J., Burt, J. A., Meyer, E., & Aranda, M. (2021). Enhancing the heat tolerance of reef-building corals to future warming. Science Advances, 7(34), eabg6070. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abg6070Sponsors
We thank G. Vaughan, D. McParland, and A. Mihala for assistance with experimental setup and J. Rowe for assistance with bioinformatics. Permits for coral collection were provided by the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi and the Fujairah and Dibba municipalities. Research was supported by the High Performance Computing Center and Marine Biology Core Technology Platform at New York University Abu Dhabi. Funding: This project was funded under Tamkeen grant CG007 to J.A.B. and a National Geographic Society grant awarded to E.J.HJournal
Science AdvancesPubMed ID
34417178Additional Links
https://advances.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abg6070ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1126/sciadv.abg6070
Scopus Count
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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