Category Archives: coral disease

coral, coral disease

Toxicopathological Effects of the Sunscreen UV Filter, Oxybenzone (Benzophenone-3), on Coral Planulae and Cultured Primary Cells and Its Environmental Contamination in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands by CA Downs, et. al.

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Coral-list post by Cheryl Woodley

I’d like to bring to your attention a new study published yesterday in the
journal *Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology* showing
that a chemical widely used in personal care products such as sunscreen,
poses an ecological threat to corals and coral reefs and threatens their
existence.

Oxybenzone (also known as BP-3; Benzophenone-3) is found in over 3,500
sunscreen products worldwide, and pollutes coral reefs from swimmers
wearing sunscreens and through wastewater discharges from municipal sewage
outfalls and from coastal septic systems. Between 6,000 and 14,000 tons of
sunscreen lotion are emitted into coral reef areas each year, much of which
contains between one and 10% oxybenzone. The authors estimate that this
puts at least 10% of global reefs at risk of high exposure, based on reef
distribution in coastal tourist areas.

Toxicopathological effects of the sunscreen UV filter, oxybenzone on coral
planulae demonstrates that exposure of coral planulae (baby coral) to
oxybenzone, produces gross morphological deformities, damages their DNA,
and, most alarmingly, acts as an endocrine disruptor. The latter causes the
coral to encase itself in its own skeleton leading to death.

These effects were observed as low as 62 parts per trillion, the equivalent
to a drop of water in six and a half Olympic-sized swimming pools

Measurements of oxybenzone in seawater within coral reefs in Hawaii and the
U.S. Virgin Islands found concentrations ranging from 800 parts per
trillion to 1.4 parts per million. This is over 12 times higher than the
concentrations necessary to impact on coral

Article
Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, pp 1-24

First online: 20 October 2015

Toxicopathological Effects of the Sunscreen UV Filter, Oxybenzone (Benzophenone-3), on Coral Planulae and Cultured Primary Cells and Its Environmental Contamination in Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands
C. A. Downs, Esti Kramarsky-Winter, Roee Segal, John Fauth, Sean Knutson, Omri Bronstein, Frederic R. Ciner, Rina Jeger, Yona Lichtenfel and 5 more

UV light on corals

Special thanks to Coral-list@noaa.gov

$39.95 / €34.95 / £29.95 *

* Final gross prices may vary according to local VAT.
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Abstract

Benzophenone-3 (BP-3; oxybenzone) is an ingredient in sunscreen lotions and personal-care products that protects against the damaging effects of ultraviolet light. Oxybenzone is an emerging contaminant of concern in marine environments—produced by swimmers and municipal, residential, and boat/ship wastewater discharges. We examined the effects of oxybenzone on the larval form (planula) of the coral Stylophora pistillata, as well as its toxicity in vitro to coral cells from this and six other coral species. Oxybenzone is a photo-toxicant; adverse effects are exacerbated in the light. Whether in darkness or light, oxybenzone transformed planulae from a motile state to a deformed, sessile condition. Planulae exhibited an increasing rate of coral bleaching in response to increasing concentrations of oxybenzone. Oxybenzone is a genotoxicant to corals, exhibiting a positive relationship between DNA-AP lesions and increasing oxybenzone concentrations. Oxybenzone is a skeletal endocrine disruptor; it induced ossification of the planula, encasing the entire planula in its own skeleton. The LC50 of planulae exposed to oxybenzone in the light for an 8- and 24-h exposure was 3.1 mg/L and 139 µg/L, respectively. The LC50s for oxybenzone in darkness for the same time points were 16.8 mg/L and 779 µg/L. Deformity EC20 levels (24 h) of planulae exposed to oxybenzone were 6.5 µg/L in the light and 10 µg/L in darkness. Coral cell LC50s (4 h, in the light) for 7 different coral species ranges from 8 to 340 µg/L, whereas LC20s (4 h, in the light) for the same species ranges from 0.062 to 8 µg/L. Coral reef contamination of oxybenzone in the U.S. Virgin Islands ranged from 75 µg/L to 1.4 mg/L, whereas Hawaiian sites were contaminated between 0.8 and 19.2 µg/L. Oxybenzone poses a hazard to coral reef conservation and threatens the resiliency of coral reefs to climate change.

climate change, coral disease

Coral-list: Jeffrey Maynard announces Nature Climate Change publication “Projections of Climate Conditions that increase coral disease susceptibility and pathogen abundance and virulence.”

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We’d like to bring your attention to a paper recently published in *Nature
Climate Change *titled: *Projections of climate conditions that increase
coral disease susceptibility and pathogen abundance and virulence. *

We present and compare climate model projections of temperature conditions
that will increase coral susceptibility to disease, pathogen abundance and
pathogen virulence under both moderate (RCP 4.5) and fossil fuel aggressive
(RCP 8.5) emissions scenarios. We also compare projections for the onset of
disease-conducive conditions and severe annual coral bleaching, and produce
a disease risk summary that combines climate stress with stress caused by
local human activities.

Some highlight results:

1. Disease is as likely to cause coral mortality as bleaching in the coming
decades. As evidence of this, at 96% of reef locations at least 2 of the 3
temperature conditions examined occur before annual severe coral bleaching
is projected to occur.

2. There are areas that meet 2 or all 3 of the temperature conditions
examined and have high or very high anthropogenic stress. These
are priority locations for reducing stress caused by local human activities
and testing management interventions to reduce disease impacts.

3. The emissions scenarios RCP8.5 and 4.5 take time to diverge and there is
little difference between the scenarios for the timing of the various
disease-promoting conditions being met. This is further evidence that
reducing stress caused by local human activities will be critically
important to reducing disease impacts in the coming decades.

The role of disease as a significant driver of future reef community
composition is under-appreciated, especially in the Indo-Pacific. Our paper
strongly suggests disease needs to be given greater consideration in
management planning. Further, we need to develop more early warning tools
for disease similar to the few already developed and the tools available
for monitoring bleaching risk from NOAA Coral Reef Watch.

The article can be accessed from the front page here:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2625.html

A short story about the article:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/05/scientists-expect-more-coral-disease-under-climate-change

Our author team: Jeff Maynard, Ruben van Hooidonk, Mark Eakin, Marjetta
Puotinen, Melissa Garren, Gareth Williams, Scott Heron, Joleah Lamb,
Ernesto Weil, Bette Willis, and Drew Harvell.

*Funders: NOAA Climate Program Office and US National Science Foundation.

—
Jeffrey A. Maynard
Research Faculty – Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Cornell
University
Research Scientist – CRIOBE & EPHE/CNRS of Moorea, Polynesia and Paris,
France.
Manager – Marine Applied Research Center, North Carolina.
P (mobile): +1 (910) 616-1096
E: maynardmarine@gmail.com
Skype: jefmaynard
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coral disease

Molecular Ecology: Bacterial profiling of White Plague Disease across corals and oceans indicates a conserved and distinct disease microbiome by C. Roder, C. Arif, C. Daniels, E.Weil, C. Voolstral

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Bacterial profiling of White Plague Disease across corals and oceans indicates a conserved and distinct disease microbiome – Roder – 2014 – Molecular Ecology – Wiley Online Library

Article first published online: 29 JAN 2014

DOI: 10.1111/mec.12638

© 2013 The Authors Molecular Ecology John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Molecular Ecology: Volume 23, Issue 4, pages 965–974, February 2014

16S rRNA gene microarray;
coral disease;
microbial community;
Orbicella faveolata ;
Orbicella franksi ;
Pavona duerdeni ;
Porites lutea ;
White Plague Disease (WPD);
White Plague-like Disease;
White Syndrome (WS)

Abstract

Coral diseases are characterized by microbial community shifts in coral mucus and tissue, but causes and consequences of these changes are vaguely understood due to the complexity and dynamics of coral-associated bacteria. We used 16S rRNA gene microarrays to assay differences in bacterial assemblages of healthy and diseased colonies displaying White Plague Disease (WPD) signs from two closely related Caribbean coral species, Orbicella faveolata and Orbicella franksi. Analysis of differentially abundant operational taxonomic units (OTUs) revealed strong differences between healthy and diseased specimens, but not between coral species. A subsequent comparison to data from two Indo-Pacific coral species (Pavona duerdeni and Porites lutea) revealed distinct microbial community patterns associated with ocean basin, coral species and health state. Coral species were clearly separated by site, but also, the relatedness of the underlying bacterial community structures resembled the phylogenetic relationship of the coral hosts. In diseased samples, bacterial richness increased and putatively opportunistic bacteria were consistently more abundant highlighting the role of opportunistic conditions in structuring microbial community patterns during disease. Our comparative analysis shows that it is possible to derive conserved bacterial footprints of diseased coral holobionts that might help in identifying key bacterial species related to the underlying etiopathology. Furthermore, our data demonstrate that similar-appearing disease phenotypes produce microbial community patterns that are consistent over coral species and oceans, irrespective of the putative underlying pathogen. Consequently, profiling coral diseases by microbial community structure over multiple coral species might allow the development of a comparative disease framework that can inform on cause and relatedness of coral diseases.