Building heat-resilient Caribbean reefs: integrating thermal thresholds and coral colonies selection in restoration.

ABSTRACT: Caribbean reefs face increasingly frequent and intense bleaching events, adding to the numerous other threats impacting these ecosystems. Addressing these challenges requires global action to reduce climate drivers, along with local efforts like reef restoration. Active restoration using thermotolerant coral colonies offers a potential strategy to alleviate these impacts; however, gaps remain in identifying context-specific temperature thresholds to guide colony selection and standardize thermotolerance assessment methods. This study addressed these gaps in two phases. First, by determining practical thresholds to differentiate species responses to heat stress; and second, by developing a framework to identify and prioritize resilient colonies for restoration. In the first phase, 70 coloni

SUBMITTER: Blanco Pimentel M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12422269 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature