Merry Christmas from Fluorescent Corals!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Today, I thought I would publish something Christmasy, but coral-related of course! 

Corals have the ability to fluoresce, which is the process of absorbing one color of light and then emitting another color. This process of fluorescence is found in every coral, but the colors vary. Corals fluoresce due to the presence of fluorescent pigments within the coral. These pigments are thought to act as a "sunscreen", protecting corals and their symbionts from intense sunlight. For corals that live deeper in the ocean, it may act as a mechanism to absorb more light. 

 

Both the symbiont and the coral fluoresce, and for researchers like myself, we can use this fluorescence to determine how many coral and symbiont cells there are. We have found that the intensity of the fluorescence is proportional to the number of symbiont or coral cells. We can use this metric to measure how a coral is responding during stress; if there is more fluorescence, then the coral and its symbiont are healthy. 

For the experiment outlined in this project, I will be using fluorescence to measure how each coral fragment is doing at the beginning of the experiment, after acclimation, and at two time points during heat stress. Here, the symbiont fluoresces red and the coral host fluoresces green - a perfect Christmas mix!