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Lipid class composition of annually bleached Caribbean corals

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Abstract

Corals with high levels of total lipids are known to have increased resilience potential to bleaching, and lipid class management may shed further light on why some species are more resilient to, or are able to acclimatize to, annual bleaching stress. Here, we measured the lipid class composition of three species of Caribbean corals (Porites astreoides, Porites divaricata, and Orbicella faveolata) collected in July 2009 near Puerto Morelos, Mexico (20° 50′ N, 86° 52′ W) that were experimentally bleached 2 years in a row. Our results show that single bleaching can significantly alter lipid class composition in all species, while repeated bleaching can result in stable (i.e., acclimatized) or even more altered (i.e., not acclimatized) lipid class composition depending on the species. Specifically, P. divaricata and O. faveolata both had altered lipid class composition with losses in storage lipids following single bleaching, but maintained lipid class composition following repeated bleaching stress. However, both single and repeated bleaching altered the lipid class composition in P. astreoides, with changes persisting for the 6 weeks after repeated bleaching stress. This study provides evidence that lipid class management is part of the suite of variables associated with coral resilience, that P. divaricata and O. faveolata acclimatize their lipid class management in response to repeated bleaching stress, but that P. astreoides does not. Corals like P. divaricata and O. faveolata may, therefore, be more suitable for coral restoration efforts since they are more likely to persist under chronic repeat bleaching scenarios predicted for later this century.

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Data availability

Data deposited at http://www.bco-dmo.org/project/516103.

Change history

  • 06 February 2020

    The author would like to correct the error in the Funding Section of the original publication of the article. The corrected Funding section is given below:

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Acknowledgements

We thank Roberto Iglesias-Prieto, Ania Banaszak, Susana Enriquez, Robin Smith, and the staff of the Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for their generous time and logistical support. We also thank Teresa Huey and Dana Borg for their field and laboratory help. We thank the reviewers for their comments and suggestions. Sarah Solomon was a student in Andréa Grottoli’s lab during the execution of this research.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Science Foundation (OCE#0825490 to A.G.G., OCE#0825413 to M.E.W) and the Hoover Foundation (to A.G.G.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Sarah L. Solomon, Andréa G. Grottoli, Stephen Levas & Verena Schoepf

  2. School of Marine Science and Policy, University of Delaware, Lewes, DE, USA

    Mark E. Warner

  3. Department of Geography, Geology, and Environmental Science, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI, USA

    Stephen Levas

  4. Oceans Graduate School, UWA Oceans Institute and ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia

    Verena Schoepf

  5. Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University at Mansfield, Mansfield, OH, USA

    Agustí Muñoz-Garcia

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  1. Sarah L. Solomon
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Correspondence to Andréa G. Grottoli.

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All collections and experiments were conducted following the rules and regulations of Mexico and imported to the USA under CITES permits held by UNAM-ICML and the Ohio State University.

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Solomon, S.L., Grottoli, A.G., Warner, M.E. et al. Lipid class composition of annually bleached Caribbean corals. Mar Biol 167, 7 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-019-3616-z

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