Dynamic symbioses reveal pathways to coral survival through prolonged heatwaves.

ABSTRACT: Prospects for coral persistence through increasingly frequent and extended heatwaves seem bleak. Coral recovery from bleaching is only known to occur after temperatures return to normal, and mitigation of local stressors does not appear to augment coral survival. Capitalizing on a natural experiment in the equatorial Pacific, we track individual coral colonies at sites spanning a gradient of local anthropogenic disturbance through a tropical heatwave of unprecedented duration. Unexpectedly, some corals survived the event by recovering from bleaching while still at elevated temperatures. These corals initially had heat-sensitive algal symbiont communities, endured bleaching, and then recovered through proliferation of heat-tolerant symbionts. This pathway to survival only occurred in the ab

SUBMITTER: Claar DC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7723047 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature