Adriana Rocha

Biology 1615
Scientific Article Summary
Coral reefs are of incredible value to human society, with half a billion people dependent
on reefs, which have been estimated to provide ecosystem services worth $375 billion per
year (Anthony J. Bellantuono). Coral bleaching has been known to kill the coral and all
of this coral bleaching is expected to keep continuing and causing harm to the coral. We
consider coral bleaching because it is a response to a change in the environment from the
corals ideal living conditions, or stress. The most common stresses that cause coral
bleaching are changes in temperature, salinity and increased ultra-violet radiation
(reefsearch.org).
Coral reefs are important not only to human society but they are also important in
providing shelter and protection to many species of fish which is why increasing thermal
tolerance is of great significance. Increasing the thermal tolerance or coral reefs would
help the coral reefs so that they do not continue to bleach. In this study of, Coral Thermal
Tolerance: Tuning Gene Expression to Resist Thermal Stress, the scientists did eight days
of hypothermal challenge, conditions under which non-preconditioned corals bleached
and preconditioned corals maintained symbiodinium density, a clear differentiation in the
transcriptional profiles revealed among the conditioned examined (Anthony J.
Bellantuono).
These scientists predicted that if the coral bleaching continued without increasing the
thermal tolerance, there could be death resulting in the loss of half of the reefs world
wide in the next 20 to 40 years which could cause damage to human society and fish
populations as stated above. The scientists used multiple studies and required prior work
on acquired hyperthermal tolerance in reef-building corals. The effect of thermal
preconditioning on subsequent heat stress has previously been demonstrated
experimentally on Acropora aspera by middlebrook et al. [32] in which 48-hour pre-
stress treatments resulted in later resistance to bleaching temperatures, with no loss of
symbionts, decrease in photopigments, or drop in quantum yield (Anthony J.
Bellantuono).
A millepora coral fragments were exposed to preconditioning treatments, with details
regarding the treatment of coral fragments available in the materials and methods section.
In brief, control treatments (C) were treated only with ambient reef flat temperature water
(17 C to 25 C). Sustained-1 treatment (S1) tanks were subjected to ten days of 28 C
thermal preconditioning prior to a 31 C thermal challenge, while sustained-2 (S2)
treatment was heated to 28 C for 17 days prior to exposure to 31 C thermal challenge.
Pulse-1 (P1) and pulse-2 (P2) treatments were exposed to 28 C prestress for 48 hours one
and two weeks prior (respectively) to a 31 C thermal challenge (Anthony J.
Bellantuono).


Works Cited
Anthony J. Bellantuono, Camila Granados-Cifuentes, David J. Miller, Ove Hoegh-
Guldberg, Mauricio Rodriguez-Lanetty. "Coral Thermal Tolerance: Tuning Gene
Expression to Resist Thermal Stress." PLOS Collections (2012): 16.
reefsearch.org. Climate Change and Coral Reef Stress. 8 October 2009. 12 July 2014
<reefsearch.org/research/climate-change-and-coral-reef-stress/>.