Corals live symbiotically with a variety of microscopic algae that provide most of the energy corals require, and some algae can make coral more resilient to heat stress. In assessing one of the main reef builders in Hawai’i, Montipora capitata (rice coral), researchers from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa found that the symbiont community in those corals varied significantly in different parts of Kaneohe Bay.
October 4, 2022
Corals live symbiotically with a variety of microscopic algae that provide most of the energy corals require, and some algae can make coral more resilient to heat stress. In assessing one of the main reef builders in Hawai’i, Montipora capitata (rice coral), researchers from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa found that the symbiont community in those corals varied significantly in different parts of Kaneohe Bay.
In the study, published recently in Royal Society Open Science, researchers tagged and collected 600 rice coral colonies across Kāne’ohe Bay, off the windward side of O’ahu, Hawai’i. They identified the algal symbionts in the colonies, and collected environmental data such as temperature and sedimentation in each part of the bay.
While scientists have known that corals host a diversity of symbionts, it has been unclear if the algae species change from one area to another, and what would drive those changes.
