Assessing the effectiveness of two intervention methods for stony coral tissue loss disease on Montastraea cavernosa

Shilling, Erin N.; Combs, Ian R; Voss, Joshua D.

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-86926-4

Cited by 53 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…It has been documented in the field that topical antibiotic applications are effective in halting SCTLD lesion progression (Aeby et al, 2019;Neely et al, 2020; Measurements were taken at the halfway point between initial disease appearance and mortality, on average 3.5 days. Shilling et al, 2021); however, the effectiveness is likely to remain localized in the region of application (Neely et al, 2020), while new lesions can appear in other areas of the colony following treatment. Colony size may be a factor in lesion appearance among the different treatment distances.…”

Section: Lesions Developed On Donor Coral Fragments Isolated From Tissue Lossmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Like many coral diseases, definitive pathogen identification for SCTLD has been unsuccessful. Studies have indicated that lesion progression can be slowed down or halted on 1 https://floridadep.gov/sites/default/files/Copy%20of% 20StonyCoralTissueLossDisease_CaseDefinition%20final%2010022018.pdf some coral species with topical antibiotics (Aeby et al, 2019;Neely et al, 2020;Shilling et al, 2021), suggesting that the presumptive pathogen(s) for SCTLD may have a bacterial component. Additionally, some studies have identified differences in bacterial communities between apparently healthy and SCTLD-affected corals, but whether identified bacteria are primary pathogens or secondary opportunistic infections is unknown (Meyer et al, 2019;Rosales et al, 2020;Ushijima et al, 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Induction and Lesion Progression Within Two Intermediately Susceptible Species, Montastraea cavernosa and Orbicella faveolata

et al. 2021

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During the last several decades, Florida’s Coral Reef (FCR) has been impacted by both global and local stressors that have devastated much of its living coral cover. Additionally, since 2014 FCR has experienced a lethal disease outbreak termed stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). Here, we examined SCTLD spreading dynamics within and among fragmented coral colonies and quantified lesion progression rate of two intermediately susceptible species—Montastraea cavernosa and Orbicella faveolata—through induction experiments conducted in laboratory aquaria. M. cavernosa colonies showing subacute tissue loss were sequentially fragmented parallel to the lesion edge to determine whether isolated tissue that showed no tissue-loss signs, referred to as isolated apparently healthy (AH) donor fragments, would subsequently exhibit tissue loss. Additionally, AH M. cavernosa and O. faveolata fragments, referred to as recipient fragments, were placed in direct contact with the M. cavernosa donor fragments to assess incidence of new tissue-loss lesions. Finally, AH M. cavernosa donor fragments were placed in direct contact with recipient M. cavernosa and O. faveolata fragments to account for aggression from direct contact. Samples were collected for histopathology of the corals through time. Many isolated AH donor fragments developed tissue-loss lesions during the 60-day study, suggesting SCTLD may be systemic within small-sized colonies. Our results confirmed that physical contact between recipient fragments and subacute SCTLD-lesioned tissue often led to tissue loss in recipient fragments. None of the control recipient or donor fragments experienced tissue loss. Grossly, multifocal lesions started on or adjacent to the septal and costal basal body walls with tissue loss progressing across the polyp septa and coenenchyme, respectively, in both species. Histologically, initial tissue-loss lesions in both species exhibited characteristic lytic necrosis (LN) at the basal body wall of the gastrodermis. O. faveolata exhibited higher rates of lesion appearance and subsequent mortality compared to M. cavernosa, but once a lesion appeared, M. cavernosa lost tissue faster than O. faveolata. This work contributes to the growing knowledge of SCTLD dynamics and highlights the differences in lesion progression within susceptible species.

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Section: Lesions Developed On Donor Coral Fragments Isolated From Tissue Lossmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Induction and Lesion Progression Within Two Intermediately Susceptible Species, Montastraea cavernosa and Orbicella faveolata

et al. 2021

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“…However, because the infectious agents in WBD can be treated with antibiotics (Kline and Vollmer, 2011;Sweet et al, 2014) it has been suggested that several bacterial taxa are likely the potential pathogens. For SCTLD it has recently been shown that topical amoxicillin treatments successfully arrested disease lesion progression on multiple species of corals affected by the disease (Neely et al, 2020) giving credence to the hypothesis that the pathogen(s) responsible are also likely to be bacterial in origin (see also Miller et al, 2020;Neely et al, 2021b;Shilling et al, 2021;Walker et al, 2021). However, examination of tissues from SCTLD affected corals by transmission electron microscopy suggests that SCTLD may be a viral infection of zooxanthellae that leads to coral host cell death (Work, 2021: see also Correa et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Multi-Variate Analyses of Coral Mortality From the 2014–2015 Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Outbreak Off Miami-Dade County, Florida

Spadafore

Fura²,

Precht³

et al. 2021

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Environmental compliance monitoring associated with the Port Miami dredging project (2013–2015), designed to assess the impact of project-generated sediments on the local coral community, fortuitously captured a thermal bleaching event and the first reports of an emergent, highly contagious, white-plague-like coral disease outbreak in the fall of 2014. The disease, now termed stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD), has decimated reefs throughout Florida and is now spreading across the Caribbean. The high prevalence of disease, the number of affected species, and the high mortality of corals affected suggests SCTLD may be the most lethal coral disease ever recorded. Previous analyses of the dredge monitoring data have reached mixed conclusions about the relative impact of dredging on coral mortality and has often parsed out disease susceptible individuals to isolate the impacts of dredging only. We use multi-variate analyses, including time-based survival analyses, to examine the timing and impacts of dredging, coral bleaching, and disease on local coral mortality. By examining the status of corals monthly from the October 2013 to July 2015 observational period, we found that coral mortality was not significantly affected by a coral’s proximity to the dredge site or sediment burial. Instead, coral mortality was most strongly impacted by disease and the emergence of SCTLD during the monitoring period. During the 2-year monitoring period, 26.3% of the monitored corals died, but the only conditions significantly affected by the dredge were partial burial and partial mortality. The strongest link to mortality was due to disease, which impacted coral species differently depending on their susceptibility to SCTLD. The focus on disturbances associated with dredging created a circumstance where the greater impacts of this emergent disease were downplayed, leading to a false narrative of the resulting mortality on the local coral communities. The results of this study reveal that while local events such as a dredging project do have quantifiable effects and can be harmful to corals, regional and global threats that result in mass coral mortality such as thermal stress and disease represent an existential threat to coral reefs and must be urgently addressed.

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“…Epidemiological models show that progression of SCTLD along the FRT was also consistent with waterborne transmission and was positively associated with high coral diversity (Muller et al, 2020). Application of antibiotics to affected coral colonies slows or stops disease progression both in the field (Neely et al, 2020;Shilling et al, 2021;Walker et al, 2021) and in the laboratory (Aeby et al, 2019) implicating the involvement of bacterial pathogens in the disease process.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Changing Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Dynamics Through Time in Montastraea cavernosa

et al. 2021

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Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) is affecting corals across the Western Atlantic and displays species-specific and regional differences in prevalence, incidence, degree of mortality, and lesion morphology. We examined two Florida sites with different temporal histories of disease emergence; Fort Lauderdale where SCTLD is endemic and the Lower Florida Keys where SCTLD has recently emerged. Our objectives were to (1) assess the potential impact of SCTLD on overall reef condition by surveying reefs in each region, (2) in a single common species, Montastraea cavernosa, examine differences in SCTLD prevalence, colony mortality, and lesion morphology in each region, and (3) look for differences in contagion by conducting transmission experiments using lesions from each region. Reef surveys found sites in both regions had low coral cover, high algae cover, and similar coral species composition. SCTLD prevalence was higher in the Lower Keys than at Fort Lauderdale and two of the common species, M. cavernosa and S. siderea at Fort Lauderdale were dominated by smaller colonies (<5 cm) whereas larger colonies occurred in the Lower Keys. Tagged M. cavernosa SCTLD-affected colonies were followed for 2 years at one site in each region. In both years, Fort Lauderdale colonies showed declining disease prevalence, low colony mortality, and disease lesions were mainly bleached spots lacking tissue loss. In contrast, Lower Keys colonies tagged in the first year maintained 100% disease prevalence with high mortality, and disease lesions were predominantly tissue loss with no bleached edges. However, SCTLD dynamics changed, with year two tagged colonies showing declining disease prevalence, low mortality, and lesion morphology switched to a mixture of bleached polyps and tissue loss with or without bleached edges. Lesion morphology on colonies was a significant predictor of amount of tissue loss. Aquaria studies found the rate of SCTLD transmission using lesions from the different zones (emergent and endemic) were similar. Our study highlights that differences in coral mortality from SCTLD are not necessarily linked to host species, lesion morphology is reflective of subsequent rate of mortality, and disease dynamics change through time on reefs where the disease has newly emerged.

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Assessing the effectiveness of two intervention methods for stony coral tissue loss disease on Montastraea cavernosa

Cited by 53 publications

References 41 publications

Measuring Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Induction and Lesion Progression Within Two Intermediately Susceptible Species, Montastraea cavernosa and Orbicella faveolata

Measuring Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Induction and Lesion Progression Within Two Intermediately Susceptible Species, Montastraea cavernosa and Orbicella faveolata

Multi-Variate Analyses of Coral Mortality From the 2014–2015 Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Outbreak Off Miami-Dade County, Florida

Changing Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Dynamics Through Time in Montastraea cavernosa

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