Coral Disease Work Group Key Research Areas

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Ultimate guide to managing coral disease
8 July 2008: The definitive management guide - handbook plus id cards for Caribbean and Indo-Pacific regions - to identifying, assessing and managing coral reef diseases was launched at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) and can be ordered online now.
[Read media release] [Read summaries] [Order online] [Visit CRTR at ICRS booth 418]

Top award for CRTR researcher
21 May 2008: CRTR Program researcher, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, has been awarded the Queensland Government’s top science award. Chair of the CRTR Bleaching Working Group, and also of its Australasian Centre of Excellence, Professor Hoegh-Guldberg was one of the world's first scientists to show how projected changes in global climate threaten coral reefs including Australia's Great Barrier Reef......
[Read UQ News]

Indian Ocean coral shows partial recovery
15 May 2008: An unusual spike in sea temperatures a decade ago killed coral throughout the Indian Ocean, dropping the average healthy, hard coral cover to 15 percent of reefs from 40 percent before. CRTR researcher, Dr Tim McClanahan, said hard coral cover had recovered to 30 percent by 2005, although the data masked big variations.....
[Read Reuters Africa article]

Strange days on planet earth
5 May 2008: The award winning National Geographic program Strange Days on Planet Earth recently premiered Episode 6 (Dirty Secrets). This features the CRTR Program’s Roberto Iglesias-Prieto and his colleagues in the Caribbean who are “studying how CO2, one of our largest industrial waste products, is impacting coral reefs”.
[Read article]

Corals on the brink of .....
24 April 2008: Predicted mass spawning at Palau (Philippines) was the subject of a feature on BBC News on 20 April. Much of the article focused on the reef restoration work of CRTR scientists Dr Andrew Heyward (“one of the first biologists to describe the phenomenon of coral mass spawning in the 1980s”) and Dr James Guest, along with Dr Maria Vanessa Baria from the University of the Philippines.
[Read article]

Global impact of coral disease

Coral disease stands out as a primary factor in the deterioration of many coral reefs with preliminary surveys indicating significant and damaging new diseases are now beginning to appear.

The CRTR Program Disease Working Group is conducting a global coral disease census across 24 high priority sites. This major assessment is designed to catalogue syndromes for the first time, and reveal whether disease outbreaks are correlated with climate warming anomalies.

In each location the impact and prevalence of coral disease is being measured.

Global warming and anthropogenic inputs

Increases in disease following warming events may be because corals have lower ability to fight disease while under temperature stress, or because bacteria are more virulent. While connections between poor water quality (nutrient loading and sedimentation) and disease are of increasing concern, evidence of direct links and synergistic effects are limited.

The CRTR Program Disease Working Group is measuring nitrogen and sediment loading at key research sites. The team will use molecular and enzymatic techniques to assess differences in microbial communities - in coral mucus, water and sediment between sites with different loadings, and between healthy and bleached corals. There will also be an evaluation of climate and anthropogenic influences on changes within microbial communities.

The causes, reservoirs and vectors of corals disease

Current research on disease reservoirs and vectors is hampered by a lack of knowledge of the pathogens causing the majority of coral diseases. To date there are only five coral diseases for which the microbial cause is known.

The Disease Working Group is developing a suite of techniques to facilitate the identification of pathogens in coral. Because only a small percentage of bacteria in nature are culturable, the identity and source of pathogens will be confirmed using various molecular fingerprinting techniques. Eventually a micro-array chip of global coral disease will be developed.

Coral resistance to disease

The microbial communities associated with coral are very complex, existing both inside the coral animal and in the surface mucous layers (SML). These normal communities protect the coral from disease. When the community structure changes, corals may become more susceptible to disease. Both bleaching and disease appear to change the microbial community profiles in the SML.

The goal of the Disease Working Group’s immunological work is to develop assays to determine general antimicrobial activity. Once resistant compounds are identified, they will be incorporated into a chip of biomarkers for stress. Field sampling will eventually allow the team to quantify and estimate the response of corals to different experimental treatments of enhanced nutrients and temperature, and map the spatial extent and variation of disease resistance in the field.

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