Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 113, Issue 16, Pages 4416-4421Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1601910113
Keywords
Persian/Arabian Gulf; adaptation; coral; Symbiodinium; climate change
Categories
Funding
- Tropical Marine Centre (London)
- Tropic Marin (Wartenberg)
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/K00641X/1]
- European Research Council under the European Union [311179]
- King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
- Israel Science Foundation [341/12]
- United States Agency for International Development/Middle East Regional Co-operation (USAID/MERC) [M32-037]
- Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat
- European Research Council (ERC) [311179] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
- NERC [NE/K00641X/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/K00641X/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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Coral communities in the Persian/Arabian Gulf (PAG) withstand unusually high salinity levels and regular summer temperature maxima of up to similar to 35 degrees C that kill conspecifics elsewhere. Due to the recent formation of the PAG and its subsequent shift to a hot climate, these corals have had only <6,000 y to adapt to these extreme conditions and can therefore inform on how coral reefs may respond to global warming. One key to coral survival in the world's warmest reefs are symbioses with a newly discovered alga, Symbiodinium thermophilum. Currently, it is unknown whether this symbiont originated elsewhere or emerged from unexpectedly fast evolution catalyzed by the extreme environment. Analyzing genetic diversity of symbiotic algae across >5,000 km of the PAG, the Gulf of Oman, and the Red Sea coastline, we show that S. thermophilum is a member of a highly diverse, ancient group of symbionts cryptically distributed outside the PAG. We argue that the adjustment to temperature extremes by PAG corals was facilitated by the positive selection of preadapted symbionts. Our findings suggest that maintaining the largest possible pool of potentially stress-tolerant genotypes by protecting existing biodiversity is crucial to promote rapid adaptation to present-day climate change, not only for coral reefs, but for ecosystems in general.
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