We examined the long-term repro ductive consequence of bleaching stress on Caribbean corals in the Orbicella (formerly Montastraea) species complex (O. annularis, O. faveolata, and O. franksi). Over 2000 observations of spawning in 526 tagged corals in Panama were made from 2002 through 2013. Bleaching events were noted in 2005 and 2010. At the population level, a re duction in spawning persist...

To date, the association and synchronization between two organismal circadian clocks ticking in parallel as part of a meta-organism (termed a symbiotic association), have rarely been investigated. Reef-building corals exhibit complex rhythmic responses to diurnal, lunar, and annual changes. Understanding circadian, circatidal, and annual regulation in reef-building corals is complicated by the ...

Reef corals typically contain a number of pigments, mostly due to their symbiotic relationship with photosynthetic dinoflagellates. These pigments usually vary in presence and concentration and influence the spectral characteristics of corals. We studied the variations in pigment composition among seven Caribbean shallow-water Scleractinian corals by means of High Performance Liquid Chromatogra...

The adaptative bleaching hypothesis (ABH) states that, depending on the symbiotic flexibility of coral hosts (i.e., the ability of corals to "switch" or "shuffle" their algal symbionts), coral bleaching can lead to a change in the composition of their associated Symbiodinium community and, thus, contribute to the coral's overall survival. In order to determine the flexibility of corals, molecul...

The genomic framework that enables corals to adjust to unfavourable conditions is crucial for coral reef survival in a rapidly changing climate. We have explored the striking intraspecific variability in the expression of coral pigments from the green fluorescent protein (GFP) family to elucidate the genomic basis for the plasticity of stress responses among reef corals. We show that multicopy ...

The preference of the starfish Acanthasterplanci (Linnaeus, 1758) for 3 species of corals which survive A. planci outbreaks (Diploastrea heliopora, Porites rus, and Coscinaraea colurnna), and the effects of organic and aqueous extracts of these corals on A. planci feeding, were investigated experimentally in the laboratory. We hypothesized that extracts of these corals deter feeding by A. planc...

Flexibility in biological systems is seen as an important driver of macro-ecosystem function and stability. Spatially constrained endosymbiotic settings, however, are less studied, although environmental thresholds of symbiotic corals are linked to the function of their endosymbiotic dinoflagellate communities. Symbiotic flexibility is a hypothesized mechanism that corals may exploit to adapt t...

Coral reefs form the most diverse of all marine ecosystems on the Earth. Corals are among their main components and owe their bioconstructing abilities to a symbiosis with algae (Symbiodinium). The coral-algae symbiosis had been traced back to the Triassic (ca 240 Ma). Modern reef-building corals (Scleractinia) appeared after the Permian-Triassic crisis; in the Palaeozoic, some of the main reef...

Recent advances in DNA-sequencing technologies now allow for in-depth characterization of the genomic stress responses of many organisms beyond model taxa. They are especially appropriate for organisms such as reef-building corals, for which dramatic declines in abundance are expected to worsen as anthropogenic climate change intensifies. Different corals differ substantially in physiological r...

The possibility that scleractinian corals and octocorals could change their symbiotic zooxanthellae in response to global warming is alluring. In Goulet (2006; Mar Ecol Prog Ser 321:1–7) I concluded that corals capable of hosting multiple zooxanthella (Symbiodinium) clades may change zooxanthellae, while those hosting one clade may not. Since the majority of corals (77%) host a single Symbiodin...