Investigating the Impacts of Multiple Environmental Stressors 

The Florida Regional Ecosystems Stressors Collaborative Assessment, or “FRESCA,” is a four-year collaborative effort co-led by scientists at AOML and the University of Miami and involving seven research institutions to assess the current and future impacts of five key environmental stressors expected to become exacerbated across South Florida: ocean acidification, hypoxia, ocean warming, harmful algal blooms, and eutrophication. 

Module 2, organized into three overarching experiments, is dedicated to determining how habitat-altering species of coral, bioeroders (i.e. sponges) and photosynthetic organisms are impacted by three environmental stressors: ocean acidification (OA), temperature, and hypoxia (oxygen-deprivation). 

Explore FRESCA Module 2 here

Understanding Reef Erosion in Acidified Oceans 

Bioeroders and calcifying organisms can have significant impacts on coral reefs, especially under changing climate conditions. Using incubation chambers designed and built in AOML’s Advanced Manufacturing and Design Lab, scientists are able to directly measure short-term calcification/dissolution rates of various calcifying and bioeroding organisms. Alkalinity of seawater changes based on the amount of calcification/ dissolution that occurs throughout an incubation period. This means that by analyzing the seawater chemistry at the start and end of an incubation, the change in total alkalinity can be used to measure calcification/dissolution that occurred during that period. In addition, the upper chamber can be swapped with a dark-chamber to further quantify day versus night calcification/dissolution rates. These chambers have been successfully used with multiple reef organisms.

Examining Coral Disease Transmission 

Scientists at AOML have developed a system designed for housing coral disease transmission experiments. Precise temperature control is achieved by regulating the water around the chambers, and a seawater manifold system directs fresh seawater into every unit. Each chamber is completely independent of the others, and as a result this system enables a degree of replication which is not often seen in coral disease experiments. 

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Variable Temperature Treatments to Understand Coral Response to Thermal Stress 

Previous studies performed within the Experimental Reef Lab have demonstrated how reef-building coral species exposed to above-average temperature treatments enhanced their thermal tolerance and were less susceptible to bleaching. With 16 independent aquaria we can expand these efforts and expose corals to different temperature ramps while investigating how different coral species respond to thermal stress with the hope of enhancing their resilience.

STAR – Using Robotic Automation to Investigate Ocean Acidification 

These robots can dose individual incubation jars containing coral fragments with precise levels of  CO2 gas, effectively altering the seawater chemistry to expose corals to a lower range of pH treatments. A pH and temperature sensor on each robot also streamlines the monitoring of the changing conditions to ensure they don’t stray from the intended thresholds during an experiment. This enables scientists to scale up investigations into how ocean acidification impacts different species and maintain specific conditions within each incubation jar. 

Applying ‘Omics to Examine Coral Response to Environmental Stressors 

Before and after ongoing experiments exposing corals to heightened conditions, we sample coral tissue and apply ‘Omics techniques to investigate the mechanisms driving how a genotype responds to those conditions. With the rapid spread of coral diseases, AOML’s Coral Program and ‘Omics team are part of a multi-agency, interdisciplinary effort to identify novel mitigation strategies at local and regional scales. Our research is therefore focused on two critical aspects of disease dynamics: 1) understanding environmental and genotypic factors that influence disease transmission, and 2) evaluating disease mitigation strategies, including treatment of infected corals and potential vectors.