Inducing Polyp Bail-out in Coral Colonies to Obtain Individualized Micropropagates for Laboratory Experimental Use

Bacterial Community Shifts during Polyp Bail-Out Induction in Pocillopora Corals

“…As bailed-out polyps can resettle once stresses are relieved, this phenomenon has been proposed as an asexual reproduction strategy ( 16 – 18 ). Although few data are available regarding polyp bail-out in the field ( 15 , 19 ), laboratory experiments have demonstrated induction of this response in several coral species under various conditions, including treatments with hypersaline or hyperthermal seawater ( 18 , 20 ). Unlike bleaching, polyp bail-out generates free-living, uncalcified polyps that can drift away in currents, allowing corals to escape local stresses.…”

“…Unlike bleaching, polyp bail-out generates free-living, uncalcified polyps that can drift away in currents, allowing corals to escape local stresses. Before resettlement, detached polyps can survive for weeks to months ( 18 , 20 – 22 ), enabling them to disperse much farther than by traditional reproductive methods, such as spawning, brooding, and fragmentation. Indeed, polyp bail-out has been proposed as a possible invasion strategy of the orange cup coral, Tubastraea coccinea ( 23 , 24 ).…”

The Microbiome After Bail-out: Testing Individual Polyps from Pocillopora verrucosa as Models for Coral Microbiology Studies

“…After 27 hours, polyps from the corals in the group treated with NaCl-enriched seawater had digested their interconnecting tissues, and a sterile pipette was used to collect the polyps from each fragment and place them in separate petri dishes, summing a total of 20 dishes with polyps from each fragment. More details and protocols for the coral bail-out process can be found at 35 . Once the polyps were collected, the pump was paused, and the water from each Petri dish was slowly exchanged with freshly ltered seawater (41 PSU) with a sterile pipette, until 50% of their volume was exchanged over a period of 10 minutes.…”

“…A peristaltic pump was then used to pump water at a speed of 9 mL per minute to the plastic trays. For the control group, ltered seawater at non-stressful salinity (41 PSU) was pumped, while in the bail-out induction group, NaCl-enriched seawater (74 PSU) was pumped in order to induce polyp bail-out through acute stress by salinity 35 . After 27 hours, polyps from the corals in the group treated with NaCl-enriched seawater had digested their interconnecting tissues, and a sterile pipette was used to collect the polyps from each fragment and place them in separate petri dishes, summing a total of 20 dishes with polyps from each fragment.…”

Deep-Sea Sponges and Corals off the Western Coast of Florida—Intracellular Mechanisms of Action of Bioactive Compounds and Technological Advances Supporting the Drug Discovery Pipeline

“…However, careful planning is needed to minimize the organisms' sensitivity to environmental conditions, including sedimentation, temperature, salinity, and pH [153,[155][156][157], to optimize their growth. Altogether, whether or not cultivation is successful is dependent on the optimal environmental conditions since it is well established that environmental stressors (e.g., predators, fouling, diseases, inclement weather, and climate change leading to bleaching events) [146,[158][159][160][161] can negatively affect growth and survivability. The inability to appropriately regulate such environmental parameters in the mariculture system has been shown to negatively affect the coral growth Altogether, the in situ farming of explants appears to be a viable approach to maintaining the delicate ecological balance while potentially supporting the production of metabolites in large quantities in a cost-effective manner.…”