Early life trade-offs in corals selected for adult heat tolerance are absent under heat stress
Abstract
Abstract Marine heatwaves are triggering mass coral mortality, threatening the persistence of coral reefs globally. Identifying and propagating heat-tolerant corals is being considered as a strategy to enhance population resilience, yet the fitness costs of adult heat tolerance across life stages remains poorly understood. Here, we selectively bred Acropora aff. digitifera from parents with experimentally determined tolerance to a simulated marine heatwave. We then assessed whether parental heat tolerance was associated with improved early-stage offspring performance. Embryos from parents of varying levels of heat tolerance were exposed for 27 hours to either ambient conditions or acute heat stress (+ 3°C), after which we quantified larval survivorship, settlement success, and juvenile growth 3 months after settlement. Under ambient conditions, higher parental heat tolerance was associated with reduced larval survivorship and settlement, indicating a transgenerational and cross-stage trade-off between parental adult heat tolerance and offspring early-stage performance. By contrast, under heat stress, offspring from higher tolerance lineages exhibited better survivorship and improved settlement success than those from lower tolerance parents, suggesting a transgenerational cross-stage benefit of parental adult heat tolerance. There was no detectable effect of parental heat tolerance or acute heat exposure on the growth of 3-months-old juveniles. These results demonstrate that…
Read the paper
Related studies
- A Survey on Knowledge Graphs: Representation, Acquisition, and Applications
- Toxicity of nanomaterials
- The Human Gene Mutation Database: towards a comprehensive repository of inherited mutation data for medical research, genetic diagnosis and next-generation sequencing studies
- Halogen bonding (X‐bonding): A biological perspective
- Biofilm formation at the air–liquid interface by the Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 wrinkly spreader requires an acetylated form of cellulose
- Opioid Activation of Toll-Like Receptor 4 Contributes to Drug Reinforcement
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.