Abstract
As coral diseases continue to devastate reefs worldwide, variation in disease resistance must be considered in conservation and management strategies. Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) has decimated Florida’s Coral Reef since 2014 and is now endemic within the region. It has affected many endangered coral species, including the major reef-building species Orbicella faveolata; however, SCTLD resistance has been documented within this species. Utilizing O. faveolata in propagation for restoration efforts, we exposed 154 multi-locus genotypes to SCTLD during four sequential ex situ experiments. Four resistance groups were identified using measured disease phenotype metrics, but only 12 genotypes with multiple replicates were consistently resistant to SCTLD. Additionally, several genotypes were both resistant to SCTLD in the ex situ experiments and had a lower risk of SCTLD when outplanted in a targeted study in the Lower Florida Keys, indicating congruency in disease resistance in field and lab settings. However, long-term outplant survival was more variable, likely due to the interaction of multiple stressors and confounding variables. Although we determined overall low levels of inherent SCTLD resistance, our results support integration of resistance testing to multiple stressors, including disease, within restoration strategies to enhance outplant survival and recovery of reefs.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Erich Bartels for his role in fieldwork management & monitoring efforts for the outplant data used in this study, Kari Imhof, Nick McMahon, Cody Engelsma, Dakotah Merck, Emmanuel Perry, Dick Rosenbloom, & Mike Williams for their assistance with coral care and experiments, and Joe Kuehl for his assistance with diseased coral collections. Funding was provided by Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection through the Coral Protection, Restoration Grant Award No. C2002 & Award No. C1FB43, and FWC Contract No. 17176. This research was carried out in part under the auspices of the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, a cooperative institute of the University of Miami and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), cooperative agreement NA 20OAR4320472.
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The authors declare that a coauthor on this study, Michael Studivan, is an editor for the Coral Reef Conservation and Restoration collection.
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Williams, S.D., Studivan, M.S., Sirotzke, S. et al. Restoration stocks of a caribbean coral species contain low levels of inherent stony coral tissue loss disease resistance.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-56396-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-56396-7
Keywords
- Coral disease-resistance
- Stony coral tissue loss disease
- Disease transmission experiment
- Resilient restoration
- Coral restoration and ecology
Source: Ecology - nature.com
