Fig. 1: Field collections and experimental design. | Communications Biology

Fig. 1: Field collections and experimental design.

From: Coral thermal stress and bleaching enrich and restructure reef microbial communities via altered organic matter exudation

Fig. 1

Non-bleached and bleached corals were collected from Moorea, French Polynesia immediately following a bleaching event (representative photo at top of forereef May 2019). A Overview of the experimental design (parallel ambient and heated water negative controls without corals are not shown). A.I Coral nubbin collection of non-bleached and bleached corals. A.II Six day pretreatment in ambient or heated flow-through aquaria. A.III 3 hour DOM exudation. A.IV 36 hour dark bottle incubation. A.V Sampling of DNA (16S), DOC, and SPE-DOM. B Thermal context of this experiment. Mean (black) and standard deviation (blue) seawater temperatures throughout 2018 and 2019 from three fore reef LTER sites are annotated as follows: orange line is the thermal stress accumulation threshold level of 29 °C, red line is the start of bleaching observations in April 2019, and purple block spans this experiment, which started immediately after temperatures dipped below the thermal stress accumulation threshold. C Starting symbiont cell concentrations of a subset of collected nubbins from the three coral species (Acropora pulchra, Pocillopora verrucosa, Porites rus) sacrificed after the three day acclimatization period prior to experiment initiation. D Ending mean symbiont cell concentrations in each aquaria after seven days. Coral images hand drawn by Milou Arts.

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