Dynamic regulation of partner abundance mediates response of reef coral symbioses to environmental change

Ecology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 1411-1420 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Cunning ◽  
N. Vaughan ◽  
P. Gillette ◽  
T. R. Capo ◽  
J. L. Maté ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Reef Coral ◽  
Dynamic Regulation

scholarly journals Convergence of DNA methylation profiles in a novel environment in the reef coral Porites astreoides

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Dimond ◽  
Steven B. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Dna Methylation ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Intracellular Signaling ◽  
Reef Coral ◽  
Common Garden ◽  
Rna Sequences ◽  
Porites Astreoides ◽  
The Common ◽  
Apoptosis Gene ◽  
One Year

AbstractPhenotypic acclimatization is an organismal response to environmental change that may be rooted in epigenetic mechanisms. In reef building corals, organisms that are severely threatened by environmental change, some evidence suggests that DNA methylation is an environmentally responsive mediator of acclimatization. We investigated changes in DNA methylation of the reef coral Porites astreoides in response to simulated environmental change. Coral colonies were sampled from a variety of habitats on the Belize Barrier Reef and transplanted to a common garden for one year. We used restriction site associated DNA sequencing, including a methylation-sensitive variant, to subsample the genome and assess changes in DNA methylation levels after a year in the common garden. Methylation changes among the 629 CpG loci we recovered were subtle, yet coral methylomes were more similar to each other after a year in the common garden together, indicating convergence of methylation profiles in the common environment. Differentially methylated loci showed matches with both coding and non-coding RNA sequences with putative roles in intracellular signaling, apoptosis, gene regulation, and epigenetic crosstalk. There was a weak but positive and significant relationship between genetic and epigenetic variation, providing evidence of methylation heritability. Altogether, our results suggest that DNA methylation in P. astreoides is at least somewhat responsive to environmental change, reflective of the environment, and heritable, characteristics necessary for methylation to be implicated as part of potential transgenerational acclimatization responses.

scholarly journals Investigating the causes and consequences of symbiont shuffling in a multi-partner reef coral symbiosis under environmental change

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1809) ◽  
pp. 20141725 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Cunning ◽  
R. N. Silverstein ◽  
A. C. Baker
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Photochemical Efficiency ◽  
Reef Coral ◽  
Fitness Effects ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Thermal Bleaching ◽  
Orbicella Faveolata ◽  
Heat Tolerant ◽  
Host Tissues ◽  
Symbiont Shuffling

Dynamic symbioses may critically mediate impacts of climate change on diverse organisms, with repercussions for ecosystem persistence in some cases. On coral reefs, increases in heat-tolerant symbionts after thermal bleaching can reduce coral susceptibility to future stress. However, the relevance of this adaptive response is equivocal owing to conflicting reports of symbiont stability and change. We help reconcile this conflict by showing that change in symbiont community composition (symbiont shuffling) in Orbicella faveolata depends on the disturbance severity and recovery environment. The proportion of heat-tolerant symbionts dramatically increased following severe experimental bleaching, especially in a warmer recovery environment, but tended to decrease if bleaching was less severe. These patterns can be explained by variation in symbiont performance in the changing microenvironments created by differentially bleached host tissues. Furthermore, higher proportions of heat-tolerant symbionts linearly increased bleaching resistance but reduced photochemical efficiency, suggesting that any change in community structure oppositely impacts performance and stress tolerance. Therefore, even minor symbiont shuffling can adaptively benefit corals, although fitness effects of resulting trade-offs are difficult to predict. This work helps elucidate causes and consequences of dynamism in symbiosis, which is critical to predicting responses of multi-partner symbioses such as O. faveolata to environmental change.

An historical analysis of species references in American English

Corpora ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-349
Author(s):  
Craig Frayne
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Sentiment Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
American English ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The Past ◽  
Corpus Studies ◽  
Google Books

This study uses the two largest available American English language corpora, Google Books and the Corpus of Historical American English (coha), to investigate relations between ecology and language. The paper introduces ecolinguistics as a promising theme for corpus research. While some previous ecolinguistic research has used corpus approaches, there is a case to be made for quantitative methods that draw on larger datasets. Building on other corpus studies that have made connections between language use and environmental change, this paper investigates whether linguistic references to other species have changed in the past two centuries and, if so, how. The methodology consists of two main parts: an examination of the frequency of common names of species followed by aspect-level sentiment analysis of concordance lines. Results point to both opportunities and challenges associated with applying corpus methods to ecolinguistc research.

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