Dissertation Research: The Effects of Elevated Temperature on Symbiotic Dinoflagellates: Possible Sites of Damage and Protection and Coral Bleaching

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Fitt 9702032 The majority of reef building corals throughout the tropics contain high densities of the symbiotic dinoflagellate Symbiodinium sp.commonly called zooxanthellae. These algae are vital to the health of the individual coral colony as well as major contributors to the overall primary productivity that allows these reefs to flourish in the oligotrophic waters in which they reside. Recent wide spread bleaching events, correlated to elevated water temperatures, have occurred world wide in which corals have lost their zooxanthellae at alarming rates. While it has been shown that these algae are adversely effected by elevated temperature, the precise mechanisms of the cellular events that lead to a loss in photosynthetic ability have yet to be established. Objectives of this proposal are: (1) to investigate if different types of zooxanthellae in vitro exhibit differential levels of damage or protection to specific polypeptides of photosystem II at the biochemical, translational, and post-transcriptional level, and (2) to determine if similar processes exist for dinoflagellates living in different hosts that reside within habitats with different levels of temperature variability. These mechanisms of damage and protection appear to play a major role in determining the ecological distribution, as well as the ultimate fate of algalinvertebrate assemblages during periods of environmentally relevant stress.