Introduction to Coral Reef Conservation and Restoration in the Omics Age

Abstract

The rapid decline of coral reefs worldwide has led to an increased focus on conservation and restoration of these marvelous ecosystems. Conservation and restoration interventions benefit from scientific data including those that describe species distribution, ocean currents, the abiotic and biotic reef environment, and the degree of disturbance on coral reefs. Various types of omics data are becoming increasingly available for coral reef organisms, and these can also advance coral reef conservation and restoration and can sometimes provide insights that cannot be obtained from other data types. This book brings together genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data for reef-building corals that bear relevance to their protection, describes how these data can be obtained, what their value in coral reef conservation and restoration is and where the field is heading in the near future. This chapter provides an introduction to the book.