Moving beyond heritability in the search for coral adaptive potential

Abstract

Global environmental change is happening at unprecedented rates. Coral reefs are among the ecosystems most threatened by global change and for wild populations to persist, they must adapt. However, little is known about corals’ complex ecological and evolutionary dynamics making prediction about potential adaptation to future conditions precarious. Here, we review the process of adaptation through the lens of quantitative genetics and make suggestions about how incorporating genomic tools can help to both understand and predict adaptive potential in corals. In many cases, small changes in experimental design may provide large increases in the power, precision, and accuracy of information produced for predicting corals’ adaptation to environmental changes. We also outline where quantitative genetic principles may be incorporated into current research programs that aim to bolster coral tolerance to future warming conditions.

Cryptic species and hybridisation in corals: challenges and opportunities for conservation and restoration

“…As sessile organisms, corals are well-suited to manipulative experiments such as common garden or reciprocal translocation designs. Additionally, their clonal nature means that genetically identical fragments from the same colony can be exposed to differing treatments, offering rich opportunities to combine experiments with genomic analyses to holistically investigate the interactions between taxon identity, phenotype, and environment (Pinsky et al, 2023;Richards et al, 2023). Divergence dates between cryptic taxa often pre-date Holocene reef configurations, implying that old standing genetic diversity is spread across contemporary reefs that are characterized by spatially complex yet replicated microhabitats and environmental gradients.…”