Coral Gardening — Florida, Dominican Republic

OPP-S60E27permanent identifier · cite as oceanportfolio.org/p/OPP-S60E27

Published as: Growth dynamics of the threatened Caribbean staghorn coral Acropora cervicornis: Influence of host genotype, symbiont identity, colony size, and environmental setting. | Technique: Coral Gardening | Genera: Acropora | Method: Individual tracking of. 1700 nursery-grown staghorn fragments and colonies from 37 distinct genotypes in Florida and the Dominican Republic. Sites in Florida included two underwater nurseries and 5 reefs where nursery-grown corals were outplanted and monitored. The staghorn nursery and 9 outplant sites at the Dominican Republic (DR) are located at Punta Cana. | Post-restoration monitoring: 12 months | Authors' conclusion: Significant positive relationship between size and growth, but decreasing rate of productivity with increasing size. Fast-growing genotypes grew up to an order of magnitude faster than slow-growing genotypes. Algal symbiont identity showed that clade A was the dominant symbiont type for almost all coral genotypes. A. cervicornis is a successful candidate nursery species and provide optimism for the potential role that active propagation can play in the recovery of this keystone species. | Lessons reported: Pruning vigor (enhanced growth after fragmentation) was documented even in colonies that lost 95% of their coral tissue/skeleton, indicating that high productivity can be maintained within nurseries by sequentially fragmenting corals. | This record was compiled from a published source and has not been confirmed by the organisation that carried out the work. No contribution to the condition index is recorded: the source reports survival of transplanted material, which is not a measure of ecosystem condition.

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