Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Internship
Opportunities

Project: Resilience of Tropical
East Pacific Reef Corals.
Physiological, Demographic, and Community-Dynamic Mechanisms

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Project title

Resilience of Tropical East Pacific Reef Corals
Physiological, Demographic, and Community-Dynamic Mechanisms

Photo credit: Ana Endara

Mentor name

Sean Connolly, ConnollyS@si.edu

Location

Naos Marine Laboratory

Project summary and objectives

The coral reefs of the Eastern Tropical Pacific thrive in a region that is very marginal for the growth of reefs. Despite this, historical data suggest that these reefs have a high capacity to recover after periods of highly stressful environmental conditions, such as those that cause coral bleaching. The Rohr Reef Resilience program (RRR) aims to discover if this previously-observed resilience is a robust characteristic of shallow-water coral reefs in this region, and, if so, to reveal the mechanisms – molecular, physiological, demographic, and ecological -- that underly this resilience. We combine video and photo-mosaic technology, visual surveys, assessments the recovery of reef communities on artificial surfaces, physiological and biochemical analysis to assess corals heath, as well as genomic analyses of coral hosts and the microbes that live in and on them to monitor ecological change along gradients of upwelling intensity and through time. We use field experiments to quantify environmental gradients and the effects of herbivory and predation, and controlled experiments to test for and reveal what drives differences in the tolerances of different populations of corals to environmental extremes.

This project description is for projects focused on the physiological, demographic, and community-dynamic processes that underpin coral reef resilience.

The specific projects available in any given application round may vary depending on the stage of the overall program, but examples of possible projects include:

  • Field work and/or experiments to understand the physiological (coral - Symbiodiniaceae symbiosis stability) and biochemical mechanisms (oxidative metabolism of corals and their algal symbionts) that underpin the resistance and resilience of coral reefs to environmental change.
  • Field work or laboratory experiments to understand the physiological (coral - Symbiodiniaceae symbiosis stability) and biochemical mechanisms (oxidative metabolism of corals and their algal symbionts) that underpin the resistance and resilience of coral reefs to environmental change.
  • Analysis and interpretation of 2.5-dimension photo-mosaics of coral reefs, to understand how the composition and relative abundance of reef organisms, and the demography of reef-building corals, varies along gradients of environmental stress and variability.
  • Analyses of the ongoing 2023 coral bleaching event, utilizing time series of photomosaics, laboratory analysis of physiological parameters from field samples, or thermal stress experiments on survivors of the event.

Mentorship goals

The intern will become familiar with field, laboratory, and/or analytical methods in coral reef science appropriate to the specific nature of the intern’s project.

The intern will work ~40 hours per week. The final product could include a poster presentation or project report, if required (e.g., for course credit at a home institution), and ideally would yield results that could be published in a peer-reviewed journal, with the intern as an author.

Advising/mentoring meetings with the RRR team member providing day-to-day supervision (the specific associate mentor would be identified based on the project details) would occur at least weekly, on average. Additional advice and support would be available from the senior mentor (Sean Connolly), as well as other team members in both one-on-one and lab meetings (multiple Principal Investigators on the project hold regular lab meetings). Additionally, the intern would be encouraged to attend STRI research seminars, including weekly Tupper seminars and approximately weekly informal science seminars at Naos Marine Laboratory.

List of suggested readings

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