Porites compressa is an important reef building coral in Hawai’i. Gates Coral Lab scientists fragmented twenty genotypes from this species in their lab on Coconut Island for a reciprocal transplant experiment that uses natural variation to investigate coral physiology and symbiotic relationships. Photo by Shayle Matsuda, September 2016, HIMB, Kaneohe, Hawai’i. Courtesy of Gates Coral Lab.
Iliana Baums of the Department of Biology at the Pennsylvania State University described this photo to me: “I am placing a homemade coral condom on an elkhorn colony. We use these nets to collect egg and sperm from the elkhorn corals. The collected gametes are used for experiments like genome sequencing, and to breed elkhorn larvae with the goal of reseeding the reefs. The photo was taken during a joint field operation with SECORE International in Puerto Rico in July 2009” (e-mail communication, June 16, 2017). Courtesy of Iliana Baums.
Pocillopora damicornis (cauliflower coral) captured with a Zeiss Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope at 2.5x magnification. The darker parts (red in original) are the single cell Symbiodinium living inside the coral polyps. The lighter parts (green in original) are Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), seen throughout the coral tissue but most prominent in the coenosarc—the tissue between the polyps. At the tips of the tentacles and around the mouth in center are nematocyst (stinging) cells (blue in original). Photo by Amy Eggers. Courtesy of Gates Coral Lab.
Porites compressa is an important reef building coral in Hawai’i. Gates Coral Lab scientists fragmented twenty genotypes from this species in their lab on Coconut Island for a reciprocal transplant experiment that uses natural variation to investigate coral physiology and symbiotic relationships. Photo by Shayle Matsuda, September 2016, HIMB, Kaneohe, Hawai’i. Courtesy of Gates Coral Lab.