The Effect of Disease Lesions and Amoxicillin Treatment on the Physiology of SCTLD-affected Corals

Through the use of an in-situ non-invasive methodology using an instrument called CISME, this project examined the metabolic health of the coral and symbionts of healthy, diseased, and disease-treated colonies over three time points to determine how SCTLD impacted the metabolism of the adjacent tissues and also how antibiotic treatments impacted the metabolic measures of adjacent tissues over immediate, short-term, and long-term time periods. The primary takeaway from these experiments is that neither SCTLD nor SCTLD amoxicillin treatments appear to be impacting the physiological metrics of the tissues adjacent to (1-6 cm away from) lesions or amoxicillin paste applications. This pattern was true across three time points.