Meeting Abstract
The capacity to adapt and/or acclimatize to local environmental conditions has been demonstrated in a wide array of marine organisms to date. Understanding how these adaptive and acclimatory mechanisms affect species survival and fitness at different life stages is especially relevant in the context of climate change, as certain life stages may be more vulnerable to environmental disturbances than others. Reef-building corals exhibit the classic marine life-history dichotomy of sessile adult populations linked by a dispersive planktonic larval stage. We found that the majority of the variation in symbiont density, chlorophyll a and protein content, and survival under acute thermal stress in Porites astreoides larvae was driven by larval family rather than day of release or reef origin. To investigate whether this family-level variation persists into recruit and adult life stages, we collected adult P. astreoides from two reef zones in the lower Florida Keys in April 2019 and obtained both larvae as well as subsequent juvenile recruits from 5 colonies per site. After being exposed to a 32 °C sublethal temperature treatment, P. astreoides adults, larvae, and recruits were sampled to quantify symbiont density, chlorophyll a content, and total carbohydrate content. Additionally, photographs were taken to assess the growth rate of recruits and bleaching status of both recruits and adults throughout the heat stress experiment. This study expands on our understanding of familial effects on thermal performance by linking traits across multiple life stages, which has significant implications for population dynamics and overall community structure in a rapidly changing ocean.
