Abstract
Worldwide decline in coral populations has led to the development of numerous coral conservation and restoration groups. These groups have established successful methods for propagating and growing corals in nurseries for outplanting to degraded reefs. However, the environment within land-based nurseries differs from natural reef environments since nursery conditions are optimized to aid coral health and accelerate growth. This study compares the physiological condition of Mote Marine Laboratory’s land-based nursery corals to over two decades of coral physiology data collected seasonally from wild conspecific populations of the Florida Keys. Coral metabolism metrics suggest that nursery corals are similar to wild conspecifics. Despite this, coral biomass and symbiotic algae pigmentation suggest that Mote’s land-based nursery corals are acclimated to low light, and maintain different Symbiodiniaceae populations compared to wild conspecifics. Our findings elucidate how the biology and physiology of corals raised in land-based nurseries are different from wild coral populations and indicate nursery corals likely incur substantial photoacclimation processes during outplanting. These insights provide a physiological framework for coral conservation and management efforts that can be used when considering the condition of nursery-raised corals before outplanting to a reef.
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Data availability
The DNA sequences generated and analyzed during the current study are available in GenBank, https:// www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/ nucco re/? term= ON455 821: ON455 829[accn]. All other datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank all the interns and staff at Mote’s IC2R3 facility for aid with sample and data collection. We also thank Derek Manzello and NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanography and Meteorological Laboratory for help with environmental data. Funding was provided by Mote Protect our Reef program to DK and EM (POR-2020-04), National Science Foundation Grant NSF-0137007 awarded to WF, and University of Alabama at Birmingham start-up funds for DK. All wild sample collections were authorized under Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary permit # FKNMS-2019-185, 2017-117, 2011-093, 2007-121-A2. Corals within Mote’s land-based nursery were authorized under FKNMS-2019-149.
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Gantt, S.E., Keister, E.F., Manfroy, A.A. et al. Wild and nursery-raised corals: comparative physiology of two framework coral species. Coral Reefs 42, 299–310 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-022-02333-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-022-02333-9