Evolution21 is a five year project examining the genetic and non-genetic responses of various reef organisms to today’s climate conditions, and those predicted under mid and high emission scenarios. These conditions include an increase in temperature and pCO2 at the same time.
Evolution 21 has been running in the National Sea Simulator since mid-2016. Some sponges, sea urchins and corals are now potentially acclimatised to future conditions and are reproducing through spawning this season. We will investigate if the offspring from these acclimatised adults are more resilient to future ocean conditions.
Do corals exposed to climate change have more resilient offspring?
During this year’s spawning we will interbreed colonies of the coral species Platygyra daedalea that have been exposed to present day (ambient, 400 ppm) mid (+1℃, 685ppm), and high (+2℃, 940ppm) conditions since 2016. Because corals can be fragmented, the same individuals were originally split into three and exposed to all conditions for close to three years. This allows us to produce families of coral offspring that share the same mum and dad from each of the different climate change scenarios.
With this set-up we will test how climate change conditions affect the ability of corals to reproduce and whether offspring vary in their heat tolerance depending on the parent’s genes and environment. With the samples collected during our experiments we use molecular tools to examine both genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of inheritance of heat tolerance. These results are important to understand if and how corals will naturally adapt to climate change and to underpin new management tools being investigated for Reef Restoration and Adaptation.
