Project: RAPID: Collaborative Research: Dynamics of storm-mediated asexual reproduction in Florida Keys corals post-Hurricane Irma

NSF abstract:
Reef-building corals can reproduce clonally through the process of fragmentation. Clonal reproduction can maintain population abundance in spite of poor sexual reproduction, a chronic problem for major reef-building coral species in the Florida Keys. Understanding the ecological dynamics of asexual (clonal) reproduction is therefore essential for predicting the reefs' future and planning of conservation efforts. This project will take advantage of the extensive physical damage to reefs in the Florida Keys caused by Hurricane Irma to characterize the extent of storm-driven fragmentation, quantify the rate of fragment survival, and compare the results to the existing clonal structure of abundant coral species. By combining detailed site surveys with novel genomic tools, this project will be the first to assess the ecological dynamics governing clonal reproduction of corals on a community-level following the most significant disturbance event to impact the Florida Keys in the last 25 years. The investigators are members of the Restoration Genetics Working Group, a part of the Caribbean Coral Restoration Consortium and will utilize this channel to present results to relevant stake-holders. Undergraduate and graduate student researchers will participate in all aspects of this project. Results will also be shared with the broader public through open-access lecture series and social-media based outreach initiatives to increase knowledge of coral ecology, and factors affecting reef decline. To promote rapid data sharing, manuscripts resulting from this project will be posted to preprint servers and both data and computational methods will be made freely available on open access repositories.

For several key reef-building corals in the Florida Keys, such as Acropora and Orbicella spp., asexual reproduction remains the only option to replenish local populations. This project will capitalize on the physical damage caused by Hurricane Irma to test specific hypotheses about factors affecting the rate of fragmentation-mediated asexual coral reproduction. This project combines surveys of coral fragmentation and fragment survival with comprehensive genotyping of fragments and the whole local coral community to identify natural clones and attribute fragments to source colonies. This project will test whether hurricane-driven fragmentation and survival patterns correlate with the existing clonal structure across coral species, to evaluate the long-term impact of storms in contributing to asexual propagation of Florida corals. This project will also determine whether asexual reproduction depends more on the rate of initial fragmentation or the rate of fragment survival. Finally, this project will investigate the relationship between fragment survival rate and the size of the source clonal group. A positive relationship could indicate natural selection for increased asexual reproduction, implying that Florida Keys reefs are evolving towards higher asexuality.