Previous studies of symbiotic associations between scleractinians corals and Symbiodinium have demonstrated that the consortium of symbionts can change in response to environmental conditions. However, less is known about symbiont shuffling during early coral development, particularly in brooding species. This study examined whether Symbiodinium consortia (1) varied in Porites astreoides on sha...

Symbiotic dinoflagellates (genus Symbiodinium) shape the responses of their host reef organisms to environmental variability and climate change. To date, the biogeography of Symbiodinium has been investigated primarily through phylogenetic analyses of the ribosomal internal transcribed spacer 2 region. Although the marker can approximate species-level diversity, recent work has demonstrated tha...

Internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of the eukaryotic rDNA operon are integral to the correct processing and maturation of rRNAs. To further understand the evolution of this region, we elucidated the secondary structure of ITS2 from representatives of the eight divergent clades of Symbiodinium Freud., a large genus of dinoflagellate endosymbionts occurring in association with zooxanthella...

Citation: Quigley KM, Bay LK and Willis BL (2017) Temperature and Water Quality-Related Patterns in Sediment-Associated Symbiodinium Communities Impact Symbiont Uptake and Fitness of Juveniles in the Genus Acropora. Front. Mar. Sci. 4:401. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00401 Temperature and Water Quality-Related Patterns in Sediment-Associated Symbiodinium Communities Impact Symbiont Uptake and Fitne...

Citation: Hoadley KD and Warner ME (2017) Use of Open Source Hardware and Software Platforms to Quantify Spectrally Dependent Differences in Photochemical Efficiency and Functional Absorption Cross Section within the Dinoflagellate Symbiodinium spp. Front. Mar. Sci. 4:365. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2017.00365 Use of Open Source Hardware and Software Platforms to Quantify Spectrally Dependent Differenc...

Plant-targeted pCB302 plasmids containing sequences encoding gfp fusions with a microtubule-binding domain; gfp with the fimbrin actin-binding domain 2; and gfp with AtRACK1C from Arabidopsis thaliana, all harbored in Agrobacterium tumefaciens, were used to assay heterologous expression on three different clades of the photosynthetic dinoflagellate, Symbiodinium. Accessibility to the resistant ...

Massive scleractinian corals of the genus Porites are important reef builders in the Indo-Pacific, and they are more resistant to thermal stress than other stony corals, such as the genus Acropora. Because coral health and survival largely depend on the interaction between a coral host and its symbionts, it is important to understand the molecular interactions of an entire "coral holobiont". We...

Coral bleaching caused by heat stress is accompanied by photoinhibition, which occurs under conditions where the rate of photodamage to photosystem II (PSII) exceeds the rate of its repair, in the symbiotic algae (Symbiodinium spp.) within corals. However, the mechanism of heat stress-induced photoinhibition in Symbiodinium still remains poorly understood. In the present work, we have investiga...

Mutualistic organisms can be particularly susceptible to climate change stress, as their survivorship is often limited by the most vulnerable partner. However, symbiotic plasticity can also help organisms in changing environments by expanding their realized niche space. Coral-algal (Symbiodinium spp.) symbiosis exemplifies this dichotomy: the partnership is highly susceptible to 'bleaching' (st...

Symbiosis between the dinoflagellate genus Symbiodinium and various invertebrates and protists is an ubiquitous phenomenon in shallow tropical and subtropical waters. Molecular studies undertaken on cnidarian symbionts revealed the presence of several distinctive lineages or subgeneric clades of Symbiodinium whose taxonomic level provides limited information about the specificity between invert...