Molecular Mechanisms of Coral Persistence Within Highly Urbanized Locations in the Port of Miami, Florida

Healthy coral communities can be found on artificial structures (concrete walls and riprap) within the Port of Miami (PoM), Florida. These feature an unusually high abundance brain corals, which have almost entirely vanished from nearby offshore reefs. corals appear to thriving in very low-quality waters influenced by dense ship boat traffic, dredging, numerous residential industrial developments. The PoM basin is part Biscayne Bay, estuarine environment that experiences frequent freshwater input, nutrient loading, hypoxia, acidification. To investigate if there a molecular basis behind ability these persist highly “urbanized” waters, we compared whole transcriptome expression profiles 25 Pseudodiploria strigosa colonies against six conspecifics reef. We urban exhibited higher (1) transcripts encoding pattern-recognition receptors may allow better sense detect food particles pathogenic invaders; (2) digestive degradation-associated enzymes, suggest elevated capacity for heterotrophy pathogen digestion; (3) related innate immunity, defense, cellular detoxification, collectively protect organisms water pollution impacts. Large ribosomal subunit rRNA gene mapping revealed P. sites predominantly hosted heat-tolerant endosymbionts genus Durusdinium while conspecifics’ were dominated symbionts Breviolum . findings reveal transcriptomic plasticity mechanisms contributing persistence urbanized habitat.