Coral Disease & Restoration

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Coral Disease & Restoration

Coral disease has become a driving cause of coral death in the last few decades. The recent emergence of stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) in the U.S. Virgin Islands was devastating for many reasons. SCTLD kills corals rapidly and can spread quickly from reef to reef. Even more important, this disease affects more than twenty different types of corals. Understanding how and why different species are susceptible to SCTLD can help us to predict the spread and impact of this deadly disease. We also seek to combat the loss of corals through active coral restoration. Our research focuses on how science can inform restoration to jump start the process of healing for these critical habitats.

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Coral Disease / Featured Articles & Videos / Additional Reading / Dr. Marilyn Brandt / Project Team

Coral Disease
In The USVI

Climate change is the single biggest threat to coral reef persistence, but local factors can also affect how resilient coral reefs are to global changes. For instance, warming ocean temperatures increase disease virulence, but clean water can provide the healthiest conditions for corals and give them the best fighting chance against infection.

The coral disease and restoration lab provides a pathway from student to career scientist. Natasha Bestrom is one of the several examples of MMES graduate students who have gone on to be hired as full-time UVI staff, while several others have gone on to PhDs and research labs all over the world.

UVI’s partnership with the Lovango Beach Club & Resort merges active coral restoration and science communication/outreach, offering visitors and locals a chance to learn and participate in a coral restoration project while providing valuable data to the scientific community. Photo: Dan Mele

Coral Restoration And Climate Change

Our group has been sampling corals and performing disease transmission experiments to understand how susceptibility varies by species and how transmission dynamics are affected by different water quality parameters, including thermal stress. While most water quality monitoring programs sample only at the ocean’s surface, we have been working to quantify water quality dynamics at the level of the corals. We compare these results with coral population dynamics and patterns of microbes in order to determine how water quality influences the health of corals. Our group has found that different species have different tolerances to changes in the environment, and this can affect their disease resistance. Because different coral reefs are comprised of different abundances of species, we are now testing how disease spread across a region is affected by the species composition of the different reefs that make up that region.

Losses due to disease and other stressors have led many Caribbean islands to turn to coral restoration. These restoration activities have often focused on fast growing branching corals. But these corals were severely impacted by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which affected the territory in 2017. Research is needed to diversify strategies for coral reef restoration.

A coral’s resistance to disease and a restored coral’s likelihood of survival can both be affected by the environment. Stressors originating from local human activities like pollution and temperature extremes due to climate change can weaken corals, making them less able to resist infection or less likely to grow and survive after being restored to a reef. Identifying what environmental factors are important in disease susceptibility and coral restoration success can help us to identify important areas for management and restoration.

Research Goals

The Marine Disease and Restoration research area of VI EPSCoR will test how different environmental and species-specific factors affect a coral’s susceptibility to disease and its likelihood of success after being restored. This research will help us to understand how different types of corals may be better targets for restoration and also how non-coral species like urchins which control seaweeds or sponges which filter water may prevent disease infection and/or positively benefit restored corals.

This research aligns with two important initiatives in the US Virgin Islands:

1) A multi-agency initiative to track and control Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) led by the Virgin Islands Coral Disease Advisory Committee (VI-CDAC), and

2) Reef Response, an initiative by the University of the Virgin Islands and VI EPSCoR to restore coral in the northern Virgin Islands using science-based strategies and involving citizen scientists.

“This research program will focus on the past and future of coral reefs of the US Virgin Islands. We aim to understand how and why reefs have been degraded by disease and other stressors in the past and then scientifically test strategies for how reefs may be restored to their former beauty and diversity.”

— Dr. Marilyn Brandt

Thompson Reuters Articles

Featured

A Coral Collapse: The Reef Plague

The Race to Save The Coral of the Caribbean

A Race To Save Coral From A Deadly Disease

Sylvia Earle Webinar

Corals In Crisis

Additional Reading & Publications

Marilyn Publications

Semi-analytical inversion modelling of Chlorophyll a variability in the U.S. Virgin Islands

Reef Response

Diseases In The Deep – A TED Talk

Specter of Coral Bleaching Hangs Over V.I.

Stony coral tissue loss disease induces transcriptional signatures of in situ degradation of dysfunctional Symbiodiniaceae

Researchers Uncover Some Secrets of Stony Coral Disease, Still Search for Its Cause

Disease resistance in coral is mediated by distinct adaptive and plastic gene expression profiles

Experimental transmission of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease results in differential microbial responses within coral mucus and tissue

Alphaflexivirus Genomes in Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease-Affected, Disease-Exposed, and Disease-Unexposed Coral Colonies in the U.S. Virgin Islands

The Emergence and Initial Impact of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) in the United States Virgin Islands

Microbial bioindicators of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease identified in corals and overlying waters using a rapid field-based sequencing approach

Diversity and Disease: The Effects of Coral Diversity on Prevalence and Impacts of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease in Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands

Microbial dysbiosis reflects disease resistance in diverse coral species

Environmental and biological drivers of white plague disease on shallow and mesophotic coral reefs

Variable Species Responses to Experimental Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) Exposure

3D Photogrammetry Reveals Dynamics of Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease (SCTLD) Lesion Progression Across a Thermal Stress Event

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Marilyn Brandt, Ph.D.

Project Lead

Marilyn Brandt is a Research Professor of Marine and Environmental Science at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI). She fell in love with the Caribbean in college when she visited a childhood friend and pen pal in Trinidad. She went on to study Caribbean coral disease ecology while earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from New York University and then her Ph.D. in marine biology and fisheries from the University of Miami. She moved to St. Thomas to join the research faculty in the Center for Marine and Environmental Studies at UVI in 2010. Her research focuses on understanding how disease is damaging coral reefs and how coral conservation and restoration can reverse that damage. She is the Research Team Lead and an Executive Team member for the U.S. Virgin Islands Coral Disease Advisory Committee and she directs Reef Response, a coral restoration program at UVI which is focused on science-based coral restoration in the northern U.S. Virgin Islands.