RAPID: Leveraging a Natural Bleaching Event to Assess Links between Bleaching and Disease

石珊瑚是珊瑚礁生态系统的基础，由于一系列环境条件，包括海面温度升高，石珊瑚的数量正面临显著下降。这些变暖的海水正在导致传染病爆发的增加，以及导致珊瑚白化的强烈高温时期的增加。加勒比海地区持续的毁灭性疾病爆发，加上2023年夏季的高温，使加勒比海珊瑚暴露在致命压力的独特组合中。研究小组正在利用这些环境条件，以及可靠的历史数据，调查珊瑚白化与疾病易感性之间的联系机制。这些数据提供了关于珊瑚恢复力的新见解，以改善这些重要生态系统的管理和保护，该团队正直接与从业人员合作，传播项目成果。该项目还为少数民族服务机构的多名本科生提供研究和教育机会。近几十年来，由于各种人为压力因素，最突出的是海面温度上升和动物流行病爆发的相互作用压力因素，硬核珊瑚面临着显著的死亡率。值得注意的是，造成珊瑚白化的温度异常和珊瑚疾病的爆发往往是相互联系的，有时是不同步的。加勒比地区的珊瑚一直在经历一种新型疾病（石珊瑚组织损失病，SCTLD）的大量死亡。此外，2023年夏季创纪录的高温引发了大规模的区域白化事件。该项目利用这些独特的持续环境条件，结合强大的历史生理数据集，研究珊瑚热应激反应与疾病易感性之间的联系机制。从白化高峰到恢复，研究小组在一年的时间里对已知的抗sctld珊瑚进行监测和采样，跟踪白化和疾病的结果、宿主免疫/生理和共生群落（微生物群和光共生）。这些数据正在与SCTLD爆发前和爆发期间收集的历史生理数据进行比较，以确定漂白恢复与疾病易感性之间的联系机制。本研究结果为珊瑚白化和疾病易感性之间的细胞机制提供了前所未有的新见解，提高了对海洋生物多应激源反应的一般理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Stony corals, the foundation of coral reef ecosystems, are facing significant population declines due to a range of environmental conditions, including increasing sea surface temperatures. These warmer waters are leading to a rise in the occurrence of infectious disease outbreaks and increased periods of intense high temperatures that result in coral bleaching. The ongoing devastating disease outbreak in the Caribbean coupled with the high temperatures of summer 2023 have exposed Caribbean corals to a unique combination of deadly stressors. The research team is leveraging these environmental conditions, along with robust historical data, to investigate the mechanisms which link coral bleaching to disease susceptibility. These data provide novel insight regarding coral resilience to improve management and conservation of these important ecosystems and the team is working directly with practitioners to disseminate project results. The project also provides research and educational opportunities for multiple undergraduate students at minority serving institutions. Scleractinian corals have faced significant mortality in recent decades due to a diversity of anthropogenic stressors, most prominently the interacting stressors of rising sea surface temperatures and epizootic outbreaks. Notably, thermal anomalies resulting in coral bleaching and coral disease outbreaks are often linked, sometimes in asynchronous patterns. Corals in the Caribbean have been experiencing a significant mortality from a novel disease (Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease, SCTLD). Additionally, record high temperatures in summer 2023 have triggered a massive region-wide bleaching event. This project leverages these unique ongoing environmental conditions, combined with a robust historical physiological data set, to investigate the mechanisms linking thermal stress response to disease susceptibility in corals. The team is monitoring and sampling corals known to be SCTLD-resistant for one year from the peak of bleaching through recovery, tracking bleaching & disease outcomes, host immunity/physiology, and symbiont communities (microbiome and photosymbiont). These data are being compared to historical physiological data collected before and during the initial SCTLD outbreak to characterize the mechanisms linking bleaching recovery to disease susceptibility. The results of this study provide unprecedented new insights regarding the cellular mechanisms linking bleaching and disease susceptibility in corals, improving general understanding of multi-stressor response in marine organisms.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.