About This Project

Coral reefs are declining worldwide due to numerous local and global threats. No-take marine reserves are increasingly being established to help promote coral reef recovery and resilience, but we still have a limited understanding of if, and how, protection might benefit a key component of coral health – the microbiome. Using a network of reserves and fished reefs, we plan to investigate this question and its implications for management of corals in a rapidly changing world.

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What is the context of this research?

Unprecedented discoveries of the role that microbes play in host development, behavior, and health are occurring due to advances in technology. Corals are one of the most diverse symbiotic ecosystems – housing > 1 million microorganisms per gram in addition to numerous animals that call corals home. Microbes are essential for coral development and health, by providing nutrients in the form of fixed nitrogen and carbon, as well as protection against bleaching and disease. Disruption of coral-microbial interactions can result coral demise. We aim to elucidate microbial community members found on corals within reserves and fished reefs to determine if reserves aid in the conservation of beneficial microbiota.

What is the significance of this project?

Coral reefs are critically important ecosystems that harbor 1/4 of all marine biodiversity and provide a vital source of food for billions of people. They are also in danger of rapid decline given the current and future threats they now face. Marine reserves are one of our most promising tools to protect reefs and give corals a fighting chance. Given the role microbes play in mediating the health and interactions of organisms and entire ecosystems, we urgently need to identify the microbial players – and their potential effects – on protected coral reefs. Our work will provide key insights aimed at bridging this gap, and will have important implications for both our basic understanding of how these ecosystems function, as well as how to best protect them for future generations.

What are the goals of the project?

We utilized two pairs of no-take marine reserves and adjacent fished reefs in Fiji to plant 3 coral species that vary in their life-history traits and susceptibility to stress (a total of 720 coral colonies). Next, we reciprocally transplanted corals between each reserve and fished reef, collected data on juvenile coral survivorship, and collected samples for microbial analyses. Our goal is to perform Illumina sequencing of the 16S gene to characterize the bacteria and archaea found on corals within these two areas to determine if no-take reserves can improve juvenile coral survivorship by promoting healthy microbial communities. This will require DNA extraction, polymerase chain reaction to amplify and sequence the 16S gene, and use of bioinformatic tools for data analysis.