Coral reefs are hotspots for oceanic biodiversity, industry, and protection. These ecosystems rely on a complex symbiosis between the coral and photosynthetic algae that allows both organisms to thrive by working together as one. Unfortunately, climate change threatens to destabilize this symbiosis and the survival of coral reefs as a whole. Climate change involves many stressors, such as warming temperatures, ocean acidification, and other changes in water quality. The harmful effects of many individual challenges have been studied but the potential for interactive effects between multiple concurrent stressors are largely unknown. Exploring the conditions under which corals survive, die, and adapt enhances our understanding of the biology and the mechanisms driving stress tolerance and adaptation. However, effective restoration is limited by gaps in our understanding of the various ways climate change affects reef-building corals and coral symbiosis. Here we use the sea anemone Exaiptasia pallida as a study system to investigate the responses to individual and combined nutrient and light stress challenges in these anemones and their algal endosymbionts. We investigated differences in mortality across five anemone clonal lines that would indicate genetic variance in stress tolerance upon which natural selection could act. We compared responses across symbiotic states to determine how host–symbiont interactions may impact stress tolerances.
A poster derived from AEMES and honors research work with Rachel Wright, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences.