Dataset: Coral priority

Priority experiment was conducted in 24 recirculating tanks at the Smithsonian stations in Bocas del Toro, Panama. Replicate staghorn corals fragments from 10 genotypes were placed into the tanks containing 12 liters of UV sterilized seawater. Twelve tanks were then exposed to an antibiotic cocktail of Kanamycin, Ampicillan, Tetracycline and Choloramphenicol (100mg/ml each) twice over a 48hr period, and the corals from the antibiotic treated and untreated tanks were sampled for DNA (T0 sample point) and lesioned with an airbrush. Half of the antibiotic- treated and untreated tanks were then exposed to 30ml of disease slurry (D) or healthy slurry (H) for the first exposure. 24hrs later a second dose of disease or healthy slurry was applied to complete the priority experiment treatments of healthy_healthy (h_h), disease_disease (d_d), healthy_disease (h_d), and disease_healthy (d_h). DNA for the microbial analyses were sampled 18hrs later (T2) and then disease was monitored over the course of the experiment. Corals that developed disease were sampled (T3) and sacrificed. All of corals were sampled (T3) timepoint on day 7.

Health status of the coral fragments was scored every 12hrs. 2-3 coral polyps were sampled using sterilized tweezers and placed into 200 ul of CHAOs DNA extraction buffer for downstream DNA analyses. Corals that developed disease were removed from tanks during the experiment.