Uncovering the role of Symbiodiniaceae assemblage composition and abundance in coral bleaching response by minimizing sampling and evolutionary biases.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Biodiversity and productivity of coral-reef ecosystems depend upon reef-building corals and their associations with endosymbiotic Symbiodiniaceae, which offer diverse functional capabilities to their hosts. The number of unique symbiotic partners (richness) and relative abundances (evenness) have been hypothesized to affect host response to climate change induced thermal stress. Symbiodiniaceae assemblages with many unique phylotypes may provide greater physiological flexibility or form less stable symbioses; assemblages with low abundance phylotypes may allow corals to retain thermotolerant symbionts or represent associations with less-suitable symbionts.

Results

Here we demonstrate that true richness of Symbiodiniaceae phylotype assemblages is generally not disc

SUBMITTER: Swain TD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7236918 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature