Larval Propagation

Outplanting sexually propagated corals is a rapidly expanding aimed at increasing coral cover and restoring breeding populations on degraded reefs, while preserving genetic variation within recipient populations. While this approach is increasingly successful, several challenges require innovative research solutions to enable large scale outcomes on degraded reefs. One challenge results from coral life history is the naturally high mortality rates of sexually reared recruits after they are outplanted (i.e., typically less than 5% of cultured recruits survive past the age of one year) resulting from intense selection pressures operating to remove less adapted genotypes during early life stages after settlement. 

Research on improving mass larval production, coral recruit health, growth and survival in order to scale-up larval propagation for large area restoration is this working group’s overarching priority.