![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/thecnidaegritty\/files\/2015\/03\/20150312-001-GOPR4436.jpg\")
<\/a>Turbinaria stellulata. <\/em>Family Dendrophylliidae (“Clade II”)[1]<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/div>In my last post, I mentioned that I was continuing the project I started last summer at Lizard Island, Australia. That’s true, but in my haste to get a post out about my current trip, I neglected some important updates. First and foremost: thanks to an NSF<\/a> grant through the Dimensions of Biodiversity<\/a>\u00a0program, our project is official, and we have a name!\u00a0The Global Coral Microbiome Project<\/a>,\u00a0or GCMP. The team consists of members of the Vega Thurber Lab<\/a> at Oregon State University and the Medina Lab<\/a> at Penn State University. Along with more money and a bigger team, the goals of the project have expanded a bit. We’re still aiming to understand how different corals have evolved to structure their microbial communities, but, as the new name implies, we are now also looking at how\u00a0these communities differ geographically in corals around the world. We know that corals that are related to each other can inhabit vastly different environments, so describing the microbes they associate with in only a subset of those environments wouldn’t get the whole picture. For example, corals that look like this:<\/p>\n Porites lobata,\u00a0Pocillopora verrucosa,\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Pocillopora …?<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n can be found in places as wide ranging as the cold, nutrient-rich, upwelling-fueled waters of the Eastern Pacific, the calm waters of the Society Islands in the South Pacific\u00a0(where I took this photo), and the crystal clear, positively balmy waters of the Red Sea, from whence I am writing this post. Most\u00a0taxonomists place individuals from either end of their range into the same species, but at some point that is an arbitrary decision. There are clear physiological differences within coral species that are correlated with geography. If you transplanted a colony of Pocillopora damicornis<\/em> from Panama to Saudi Arabia, the elevated water temperatures would almost certainly cause it to bleach and die. Why? Dunno. Some researchers, such as the Meyer lab<\/a> at OSU, are trying to figure that out by looking at genetic differences in the corals. Others suggest\u00a0that corals can gradually acclimate to such extremes in temperature. We think those hypotheses are part of the story, but that the microbes that live with corals might tell another important part. After all, the interactions with microbes through disease and bleaching are the most common causes of coral death. If we compare\u00a0the differences in microbes across a host species’ range of environments\u00a0to the differences\u00a0explainable by the coral’s evolutionary history, we might be able to explain why some corals are more tolerant\u00a0of variation in the environment than others.<\/p>\n Reveal your secrets to me, oh corals!<\/p><\/div>\n As I procrastinate on\u00a0my mountains of queued labwork,\u00a0I am happily organizing and editing my photos from the field.\u00a0We have photographed each sampled coral colony, hoping to use the collection as a backup for the metadata that we collected simultaneously. The photo at the top of the page\u00a0depicts\u00a0the last coral we sampled on this trip – one that had me pumping my fists underwater in excitement! It’s not a particularly rare species, but Jesse and I had a long wish list, a short span of time, and a limited number of reefs to explore. In order to describe the broad levels of variation in the coral microbiome, we are trying to sample\u00a0at least two species from each coral family we come across, in each location. After we visit a number of reefs around the world, we hope to\u00a0have enough replication within each family to describe how they differ from one another. As our tanks of air slowly got lower on gas, we still hadn’t found a symbiont-bearing representative of the Dendrophylliidae, though we knew it was around here somewhere! Just as I had given up on it, I spotted that\u00a0yellow rock. And to be honest,\u00a0the\u00a0excitement I felt at that moment is the real reason that\u00a0I\u00a0do what I do.<\/p>\n The prize is won.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In my last post, I mentioned that I was continuing the project I started last summer at Lizard Island, Australia. That’s true, but in my haste to get a post out about my current trip, I neglected some important updates. … Continue reading <\/a><\/a>