ISD x OCES Seminar – Exploring Selective Breeding as a Strategy to Increase the Thermal Resilience of Reef-Building Corals

Abstract:

Coral reefs are among the most biodiverse ecosystems on our planet and the services they provide to the environment, economies, and societies are valued at ~10 trillion USD per year. Their evolutionary success is attributed to productive symbioses between coral animals, photosynthetic endosymbionts, and beneficial bacteria which grow the living foundation of the ecosystem. However, coral symbioses are very sensitive to changes in the environment and are negatively impacted by the effects of climate change. Anomalously warm temperatures cause coral bleaching, a severe stress response involving symbiosis breakdown, coral starvation, and death. Warm water bleaching events have contributed to significant losses of coral cover from all ocean basins and coral reefs recently suffered their third global die-off due to rising sea temperatures. Some regions are now experiencing several bleaching events per decade (e.g. the Arabian Gulf and the Great Barrier Reef), which hinders their ability to recover from these disturbances. The future persistence of coral reefs is dependent on evolutionary responses to warming, yet there is widespread concern that rates of warming (+2-4°C by 2100) will outpace the adaptive capacity of the coral host and lead to extinctions and widespread ecosystem losses. These concerns have prompted calls for unconventional conservation strategies that accelerate adaptation by producing genotypes with enhanced heat tolerance through selective breeding. Here, I provide an overview of our current research on selective breeding in corals and discuss its potential as a mechanism for fast-tracking the evolu8onary adaptation of reef-building corals to increasing temperatures.

Speaker’s biography:

Dr. Manuel Aranda Lastra is a Professor of Marine Sciences at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. He earned his Ph.D. in 2006, focusing on the evolution of gene regulatory networks in insects. Over the years, he has pivoted his research toward the fascinating world of coral reefs, blending his background in molecular biology, evolutionary genetics, and genomics.

He is deeply committed to understanding the complex symbiotic relationship between corals and their dinoflagellate endosymbionts. Together, these organisms constitute the key players in one of the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystems. Through cutting-edge functional genomics and genetic approaches, Dr. Aranda and his team delve into questions surrounding how this relationship works, and how we can help these orgnaisms adapt to climate change. They employ -omics approaches combined with experimental validation to uncover the molecular mechanisms underlying coral bleaching and to develop assisted evolution approaches to increase coral resilience.

Dr. Manuel Aranda Lastra ’s work is particularly timely, given the threats posed by climate change to these fragile ecosystems. His research goes beyond just understanding the evolutionary intricacies and delves into epigenetic mechanisms like DNA methylation and histone modifications, providing vital clues for coral reef restoration and resilience.