Investigating stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) susceptibility in brain coral recruits

This project aimed to further explore results from a previous study that indicated crosses between naïve rescue corals and wild coral colonies resulted in offspring that are less susceptible to SCTLD than offspring produced from two naïve parents. To test this, the research team exposed recruits (baby corals) from three ‘highly-susceptible’ coral species whose parents came from ‘pre-invasion colonies (that are naïve to SCTLD and putatively susceptible to it) and ‘endemic’ colonies (that are presumed to have been exposed to SCTLD and are putatively more resistant). They found that rates of infection and mortality were similar across all species and parentage, suggesting that parentage likely does not play a role in susceptibly. However, they found that some recruits remained apparently healthy throughout the experiment and propose that there is likely differential susceptibility between coral and symbiont species. Next steps include analyzing the coral holobiont to see if certain traits may be heritable.