scholarly journals A review of coral bleaching specimen collection, preservation, and laboratory processing methods

PeerJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e11763
Author(s):  
Rowan H. McLachlan ◽  
Kerri L. Dobson ◽  
Emily R. Schmeltzer ◽  
Rebecca Vega Thurber ◽  
Andréa G. Grottoli
Keyword(s):  
Coral Bleaching ◽  
Limited Resource ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Pocillopora Damicornis ◽  
Processing Methods ◽  
Stylophora Pistillata ◽  
Specimen Collection ◽  
Common Practices ◽  
The Future ◽  
Reef Decline

Under current climate warming predictions, the future of coral reefs is dire. With projected coral reef decline, it is likely that coral specimens for bleaching research will increasingly become a more limited resource in the future. By adopting a holistic approach through increased collaborations, coral bleaching scientists can maximize a specimen’s investigative yield, thus reducing the need to remove more coral material from the reef. Yet to expand a specimen’s utility for additional analytic methods, information on how corals are collected is essential as many methods are variably sensitive to upstream handling and processing. In an effort to identify common practices for coral collection, sacrifice, preservation, and processing in coral bleaching research, we surveyed the literature from the last 6.5 years and created and analyzed the resulting dataset of 171 publications. Since January 2014, at least 21,890 coral specimens were collected for bleaching surveys or bleaching experiments. These specimens spanned 122 species of scleractinian corals where the most frequently sampled were Acropora millepora, Pocillopora damicornis, and Stylophora pistillata. Almost 90% of studies removed fragments from the reef, 6% collected skeletal cores, and 3% collected mucus specimens. The most common methods for sacrificing specimens were snap freezing with liquid nitrogen, chemical preservation (e.g., with ethanol or nucleic acid stabilizing buffer), or airbrushing live fragments. We also characterized 37 distinct methodological pathways from collection to processing of specimens in preparation for a variety of physiological, -omic, microscopy, and imaging analyses. Interestingly, almost half of all studies used only one of six different pathways. These similarities in collection, preservation, and processing methods illustrate that archived coral specimens could be readily shared among researchers for additional analyses. In addition, our review provides a reference for future researchers who are considering which methodological pathway to select to maximize the utility of coral bleaching specimens that they collect.

scholarly journals Thermal stress reduces pocilloporid coral resilience to ocean acidification by impairing control over calcifying fluid chemistry

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. eaba9958
Author(s):  
Maxence Guillermic ◽  
Louise P. Cameron ◽  
Ilian De Corte ◽  
Sambuddha Misra ◽  
Jelle Bijma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Stress ◽  
Ocean Acidification ◽  
Pocillopora Damicornis ◽  
Carbonate Chemistry ◽  
Negative Interaction ◽  
Saturation State ◽  
Stylophora Pistillata ◽  
Coral Calcification ◽  
Influence Of Temperature On ◽  
Different Time Scales

The combination of thermal stress and ocean acidification (OA) can more negatively affect coral calcification than an individual stressors, but the mechanism behind this interaction is unknown. We used two independent methods (microelectrode and boron geochemistry) to measure calcifying fluid pH (pHcf) and carbonate chemistry of the corals Pocillopora damicornis and Stylophora pistillata grown under various temperature and pCO2 conditions. Although these approaches demonstrate that they record pHcf over different time scales, they reveal that both species can cope with OA under optimal temperatures (28°C) by elevating pHcf and aragonite saturation state (Ωcf) in support of calcification. At 31°C, neither species elevated these parameters as they did at 28°C and, likewise, could not maintain substantially positive calcification rates under any pH treatment. These results reveal a previously uncharacterized influence of temperature on coral pHcf regulation—the apparent mechanism behind the negative interaction between thermal stress and OA on coral calcification.

Invited review: Importance of animal health and welfare for the stability of the three pillars of sustainability of livestock systems

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-214
Author(s):  
P. Chemineau
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Population Increase ◽  
Strong Interactions ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Livestock Systems

The future livestock systems at the world level will have to produce more in the perspective of the population increase in the next 30 years, whereas reducing their environmental footprint and addressing societal concerns. In that perspective, we may wonder if animal health and animal welfare, which are two essential components of production systems, may play an important role in the stability of the three pillars of sustainability of the livestock systems. We already know that objectives driven by economy, environment and society may modify animal welfare and animal health, but is the reverse true? The answer is yes and in 11 cases out of 12 of the matrix health-welfare×3 pillars of sustainability×positive or negative change, we have many examples indicating that animal health and animal welfare are able to modify, positively or negatively, the three pillars of sustainability. Moreover, we also have good examples of strong interactions between health and welfare. These elements play in favour of an holistic approach at the farm level and of a multicriterial definition of what could be the sustainable systems of animal production in the future which will respect animal welfare and maintain a good animal health.

scholarly journals Thermal plasticity in coral reef symbionts is mediated by oxidation of membrane lipids

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Botana ◽  
Adriano Chaves-Filho ◽  
Alex Inague ◽  
Arthur Guth ◽  
Flavia Saldanha-Corrêa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Oxidative Stress ◽  
Coral Reef ◽  
Coral Bleaching ◽  
Membrane Lipids ◽  
Physiological Mechanism ◽  
Heat Sensitivity ◽  
Stress Theory ◽  
Thermal Plasticity ◽  
Coral Health ◽  
Reef Decline

Abstract The oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) is a common stress response across biomes with potential to trigger impairment of cell growth and reproduction. The oxidative stress theory of coral bleaching induced by global warming has been widely accepted to explain coral reef decline, but its underlying physiological mechanism remains under debate. Here we used lipidomic and population density data to examine cell cultures of three coral reef symbionts after a heat shock (sudden rise of 12 °C for 4 hours). Heat tolerance in S. microadriaticum and C. goreaui was characterized by preservation of thylakoid-derived glycolipids. Conversely, heat sensitivity in B. minutum was linked to elevated concentrations of oxidized PUFA esterified to glycolipids, suggesting that culture growth had ceased due to severe oxidative damage. Our findings provide a basis to further understand the role played by oxidative stress in coral bleaching and reveal novel biomarkers for the monitoring of symbiont-coral health.

scholarly journals Genotype by environment interactions in coral bleaching

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1946) ◽  
pp. 20210177
Author(s):  
Crawford Drury ◽  
Diego Lirman
Keyword(s):  
Coral Bleaching ◽  
Environmental Gradients ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Cell Signalling ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Acropora Cervicornis ◽  
Genotype By Environment ◽  
Significant Enrichment ◽  
Reef Tract ◽  
Reef Decline

Climate-driven reef decline has prompted the development of next-generation coral conservation strategies, many of which hinge on the movement of adaptive variation across genetic and environmental gradients. This process is limited by our understanding of how genetic and genotypic drivers of coral bleaching will manifest in different environmental conditions. We reciprocally transplanted 10 genotypes ofAcropora cervicornisacross eight sites along a 60 km span of the Florida Reef Tract and documented significant genotype × environment interactions in bleaching response during the severe 2015 bleaching event. Performance relative to site mean was significantly different between genotypes and can be mostly explained by ensemble models of correlations with genetic markers. The high explanatory power was driven by significant enrichment of loci associated DNA repair, cell signalling and apoptosis. No genotypes performed above (or below) bleaching average at all sites, so genomic predictors can provide practitioners with ‘confidence intervals' about the chance of success in novel habitats. These data have important implications for assisted gene flow and managed relocation, and their integration with traditional active restoration.

Fractal-multifractal ensembles of downscaled precipitation and temperature sets as implied by climate models

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahesh Lal Maskey ◽  
David Joseph Serrano Suarez ◽  
Joshua H. Viers ◽  
Josue Medellin-Azuara ◽  
Bellie Sivakumar ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Models ◽  
Geometric Approach ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Sensitivity Study ◽  
Climatic Data ◽  
Fractal Function ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Circulation Models ◽  
The Future ◽  
Precipitation And Temperature

<p>Describing the specific details and textures implicit in real-world hydro-climatic data sets is paramount for the proper description and simulation of variables such as precipitation, streamflow, and temperature time series. To this aim, a couple of decades ago, a deterministic geometric approach, the so-called fractal-multifractal (FM) method,<sup>1,2</sup> was introduced. Such is a holistic approach capable of faithfully encoding (describing)<sup>3</sup>, simulating<sup>4</sup>, and downscaling<sup>5</sup> hydrologic records in time, as the outcome of a fractal function illuminated by a multifractal measure. This study employs the FM method to generate ensembles of daily precipitation and temperature sets obtained from global circulation models (GCMs). Specifically, this study uses data obtained via ten GCM models, two sets of daily records, as implied from the past, over a year, and three sets projected for the future, as downscaled via localized constructed analogs (LOCA) for a couple of sites in California. The study demonstrates that faithful representations of all sets may be achieved via the FM approach, using encodings relying on 10 and 8 geometric (FM) parameters for rainfall and temperature, respectively. They result in close approximations of the data's histogram, entropy, and autocorrelation functions. By presenting a sensitivity study of FM parameters' for historical and projected data, this work concludes that the FM representations are useful for tracking and foreseeing the records' complexity<sup>6</sup> in the past and the future and other applications in hydrology such as bias correction.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>References</strong></p>

Treating skin conditions: a holistic approach in dermatology

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 58-64
Author(s):  
Emma Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Medicine ◽  
Skin Disease ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Holistic Approaches ◽  
Disease Therapy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Skin Conditions

This article is a review of current evidence to both support and refute holistic approaches to dermatological cases, including analysis of data linked to psychodermatology, psychosocial and lifestyle influences. A case for taking an integrated approach adjuvant to traditional medicine in skin disease therapy, how this could save time, money and reduce pressure on resources will be discussed. Overall, the research is promising; however, there are gaps in knowledge and there is a need for long-term, larger scale studies in the future. Also, an improved understanding of the processes that lead to inflammatory cutaneous diseases in the future will enable practitioners to make better treatment choices.

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