Florida Elkhorn Captive spawning

[PerculaBen]

Exciting news:

CNN Exclusive: Scientists make major breakthrough in race to save Caribbean coral | CNN

Elkhorn coral once dominated the Caribbean. But, just as other vital coral ecosystems are degrading around the world, elkhorn are now rarely seen alive in the wild.

www.cnn.com

 

[DaJMasta]

Woo hoo!

Glad to hear their project is seeing more success!

 

[sculpin01]

There are actually quite a few labs doing Apex-based ex situ spawning currently. Jamie Craggs pioneered it but now a lot of places are using it to spawn far from the corals homes, increase yield from spawning and to spawn corals out of season. The latter allows research labs to have a steady supply of baby corals throughout the year, as opposed to just one night a year. Australia’s AIMS marine biology lab succeeded in doing that two weeks ago.

The question is when are hobbyists going to do so and I’m willing to bet it will be within 5 years.

 

[foxt]

I saw this too. I appreciate the significance of the ability to spawn coral. But I also wonder what role fragging might play in repopulating reefs? Does spawning represent the potential of vastly more scale?

 

[sculpin01]

Fragging is clonal, so there is no increase in genetic diversity. If a disease or environmental condition occurs that the cloned coral is sensitive too, all of the clones will be wiped out. Some areas of the Caribbean reef tracts are largely clonal, leading to concern for their survival.

Spawning increases genetic diversity, in that all of the new corals produced are genetically different. They are “children” of the parent corals, and as such each will have different survival capabilities. This encourages survival of the species as a whole.

Having said that, much of the reef restoration currently being done is by fragging, growing out frags to a survivable size, and outplanting on the reef.

BTW in the scientific literature, the parent colonies are known as “genets” and the frags are known as “ramets”.

 

[A. grandis]

Fragging is clonal, so there is no increase in genetic diversity. If a disease or environmental condition occurs that the cloned coral is sensitive too, all of the clones will be wiped out. Some areas of the Caribbean reef tracts are largely clonal, leading to concern for their survival.

Spawning increases genetic diversity, in that all of the new corals produced are genetically different. They are “children” of the parent corals, and as such each will have different survival capabilities. This encourages survival of the species as a whole.

Having said that, much of the reef restoration currently being done is by fragging, growing out frags to a survivable size, and outplanting on the reef.

BTW in the scientific literature, the parent colonies are known as “genets” and the frags are known as “ramets”.

Only if the parent colony was originated from a planula settlement (sexual reproduction) it would be called "genet".

 

[Yellowsound]

As relates to genetic diversity, this project seems promising!

These scientists tried a coral-breeding moonshot—and it worked

"They were just outgrowing the tanks!”

www.motherjones.com

 

[Graffiti Spot]

God how I would love to work with this coral! I have been keeping up with a lot of this and it’s great to see the images of the large fragments they planted and grew on the reef as well as the pictures of the polyps from spawning.