‘Omics of Natural Thermal Tolerance

We explore the molecular characteristics of thermally tolerant and sensitive corals using an in situ library of known colonies in Kāneʻohe Bay. This library, originally tagged in 2014 and 2015 by the Gates Coral Lab,  includes pairs of adjacent, conspecific corals where one coral in the pair bleached during previous high temperature events and the other coral in the pair did not bleach, but instead exhibited a natural tolerance to thermal stress.  This work currently includes genomic, metagenomic, metabolomic, and transcriptomic sampling of these corals in the field as well experimental heat stress experiments with these same corals in the lab. These colonies represent a powerful framework for examining the short- and long-term impacts of coral bleaching. 

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Ongoing Projects

  • Sequencing of parental phenotypes

  • Allele frequency signatures of selection during breeding of known parents

  • Single-polyp metabolomics

  • Spatial ecology of the coral holobiont

  • Metabolomic characterization of early life-history stages and transgenerational inheritance of biochemical signatures

Publications

Roach TNF, Dilworth J, Martin C, Jones D, Quinn R, Drury C. Metabolomic signatures of coral bleaching history. Nature Ecology and Evolution (2021). Link.

Drury C, Lirman D. Genotype by environment interactions in coral bleaching. Proceedings of the Royal Society (2021). Link.

Drury C, Bean N, Harris C, Hancock J, Huckeba J, Martin C, Roach T, Quinn R, Gates RD. Intrapopulation adaptive variance supports thermal tolerance in a reef-building coral. Communications Biology (2022). Link.

Caruso C, Rocha de Souza M, Ruiz-Jones L, Conetta D, Hancock J, Hobbs C, Kahkejian V, Kitchen R, Marin C, Monismith S, Madin J, Gates RD, Drury C. Genetic patterns in Montipora capitata across an environmental mosaic in Kāneʻohe Bay. Molecular Ecology (2022). Link.

Rocha de Souza M, Caruso C, Ruiz-Jones L, Drury C, Gates RD, Toonen RJ. Community composition of coral-associated Symbiodiniaceae is driven by fine-scale environmental gradients. Royal Society Open Science (2022). Link.

Drury C, Dilworth J, Majerová E, Caruso C, Greer JB. Expression plasticity regulates intraspecific variation in the acclimatization potential of a reef-building coral. Nature Communications (2022). Link.