SEMINAR: MBF 602 Seminar- Roxane Boonstra Friday, March 26th, 2010 4:00pm S/A seminar room

[Cary Rios <crios@rsmas.miami.edu>]

The use of ‘antique’ Symbiodinium DNA to investigate the effects of anthropogenic climate change in reef-building corals

 

Reef-building scleractinian corals form mutualistic relationships with dinoflagellate algal symbionts in the genus Symbiodinium. In response to environmental stress this relationship breaks down, resulting in the loss of algae during coral “bleaching” events. The last 30 years have seen numerous episodes of mass coral bleaching as a result of increases in sea surface temperature, but prior to the 1970s, few (if any) records of heat-induced bleaching events exist. By examining Symbiodinium communities in preserved corals collected prior to the 1970s, and comparing these with those found in similar corals today, it can be determined: (1) whether symbiont community shifts have occurred in response to environmental changes over decadal to centennial timescales; and (2) how these changes will affect future predictions of coral reef response to anthropogenic climate change. By comparing coral samples from museum collections dating from the early 1800s to the early 1970s and those recently collected in the last decade, I will test the hypothesis that the present distributions of Symbiodinium reflect greater exposure to environmental stressors as a result of climate change. Specifically, I hypothesize that members of Symbiodinum in clade D, a putatively stress-tolerant clade, will be more common on contemporary coral reefs due to exposure to increasingly high sea surface temperatures. Increasing sample size, experimenting with various enzymes to optimize amplification conditions and using qPCR to quantify background symbionts are key steps to building an analysis of sufficient statistical power and will be my focus over the next year.

 

Roxane K. Boonstra

B.S. Zoology, University of Florida, 2007

Entered part-time M.S. program at RSMAS fall 2008

Advisor: Andrew Baker

Cary Rios 
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