Depth-dependent parental effects create invisible barriers to coral dispersal

Tom Shlesinger*, Yossi Loya

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Scopus citations

Abstract

Historically, marine populations were considered to be interconnected across large geographic regions due to the lack of apparent physical barriers to dispersal, coupled with a potentially widely dispersive pelagic larval stage. Recent studies, however, are providing increasing evidence of small-scale genetic segregation of populations across habitats and depths, separated in some cases by only a few dozen meters. Here, we performed a series of ex-situ and in-situ experiments using coral larvae of three brooding species from contrasting shallow- and deep-water reef habitats, and show that their settlement success, habitat choices, and subsequent survival are substantially influenced by parental effects in a habitat-dependent manner. Generally, larvae originating from deep-water corals, which experience less variable conditions, expressed more specific responses than shallow-water larvae, with a higher settlement success in simulated parental-habitat conditions. Survival of juvenile corals experimentally translocated to the sea was significantly lower when not at parental depths. We conclude that local adaptations and parental effects alongside larval selectivity and phenotype-environment mismatches combine to create invisible semipermeable barriers to coral dispersal and connectivity, leading to habitat-dependent population segregation.

Original languageEnglish
Article number202
JournalCommunications Biology
Volume4
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2021

Funding

FundersFunder number
Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat
Israeli Taxonomy Initiative
PADI Foundation
Rieger Foundation
Israel Science Foundation1191/16

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