CORAL HEALTH ASSESSMENT PROGRAM STUDIES

Micro-spatial genetic coral reef surveys

Dr. Karl works with coral samples back.

The field of coral population genetics has tried to move directly to the big issues of dispersal and colonization before conducting the essential work of identifying individuals in local populations. There is a spatial and genetic relationship among all individual coral colonies in a coral reef, but the cause and effect of this are rarely considered. Distribution is likely to be greatly influenced by local difference, therefore understanding small-scale heterogeneity is critical to interpreting higher-level processes. It is important to understand the genetic variability on a reef and thus the adaptability of the reef to disturbances such as climate change. This project looks at reefs from a micro-spatial scale to assess the genetic architecture of a reef in order to understand the underlying cause of individual differences in coral health and mortality. Essentially researchers want to know why coral colonies get sick and die, and why on a single reef, does one individual get sick when an identical individual, remains healthy?

This research has taken place since 2006 at a specific reef in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands at French Frigate Shoals (FFS) and Pearl and Hermes Atoll (PHA). To uniquely identify each individual coral sample a genetic markers was identified for each species.

Location of sampled colonies on Pearl and Hermes reef (S.Karl).

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