Adaptation to loacal environment in corals?

Are corals genetically adapted to different habitats, or are they able to change their physiology to match novel environmental conditions? Carly Kenkel, a PhD candidate from the University of Texas at Austin hopes to answer this question for her model coral species, the Mustard Hill Coral (Porites astreoides), in the Florida Keys. She came to KML to set-up a large reciprocal transplant experiment to test for local adaptation of P. astreoides to differing thermal environments in the Keys. Because she was only able to spend 5 days here, the KML staff scientists helped with her collections and field deployment of the experiment. KML divers collected 15 P. astreoides colonies from a near-shore and off-shore site.

Healthy P. asteroides colony next to color reference card

Carly then fragmented these colonies using a tile saw, and mounted them on cement pucks with cattle tag labels to keep track of all the individuals.

Finally, Carly weighed all the fragments so that she can monitor growth during her experiment.

KML divers returned all the mounted fragments to her field sites, and she’ll be back in the spring and again in the fall to see if her predictions are correct!