Many ecosystems around the world are rapidly deteriorating due to both local and global pressures, and perhaps none so precipitously as coral reefs. Management of coral reefs through maintenance (e.g., marine-protected areas, catchment management to improve water quality), restoration, as well as global and national governmental agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., the 2015 Paris Agreement) is critical for the persistence of coral reefs. Despite these initiatives, the health and abundance of corals reefs are rapidly declining and other solutions will soon be required. We have recently discussed options for using assisted evolution (i.e., selective breeding, assisted gene flow, conditioning or epigenetic programming, and the manipulation of the coral microbiome) as a means to enhance environmental stress tolerance of corals and the success of coral reef restoration efforts. The 2014-2016 global coral bleaching event has sharpened the focus on such interventionist approaches. We highlight the necessity for consideration of alternative (e.g., hybrid) ecosystem states, discuss traits of resilient corals and coral reef ecosystems, and propose a decision tree for incorporating assisted evolution into restoration initiatives to enhance climate resilience of coral reefs.

The recent extensive loss of biodiversity raises the question of whether organisms will adapt in time to survive the current era of rapid environmental change, and whether today's conservation practices and policies are appropriate. We review the benefits and risks of inter‐ and intraspecific hybridization as a conservation management tool aimed at enhancing adaptive potential and survival, with particular reference to coral reefs. We conclude that hybridization is underutilized and that many of its perceived risks are possibly overstated; the few applications of hybridization in conservation to date have already shown positive outcomes. Moreover, perceptions of potential risk change significantly when the focus of conservation is on preserving the adaptive potential of a species/population, instead of preserving the species in its original state. Further, we suggest that the uncertain legal status of hybrids as entities of protection can be costly to society and ecosystems, and that a legislative revision of hybrids and hybridization is overdue. We present a decision tree to help assess when and where hybridization can be a suitable conservation tool, and whether inter‐ or intraspecific hybridization is the preferred option.

Climate change and other anthropogenic disturbances have created an era characterized by the inability of most ecosystems to maintain their original, pristine states, the Anthropocene. Investigating new and innovative strategies that may facilitate ecosystem restoration is thus becoming increasingly important, particularly for coral reefs around the globe which are deteriorating at an alarming rate. The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lost half its coral cover between 1985 and 2012, and experienced back-to-back heat-induced mass bleaching events and high coral mortality in 2016 and 2017. Here we investigate the efficacy of interspecific hybridization as a tool to develop coral stock with enhanced climate resilience. We crossed two Acropora species pairs from the GBR and examined several phenotypic traits over 28 weeks of exposure to ambient and elevated temperature and pCO 2 . While elevated temperature and pCO 2 conditions negatively affected size and survival of both purebreds and hybrids, higher survival and larger recruit size were observed in some of the hybrid offspring groups under both ambient and elevated conditions. Further, interspecific hybrids had high fertilization rates, normal embryonic development, and similar Symbiodinium uptake and photochemical efficiency as purebred offspring. While the fitness of these hybrids in the field and their reproductive and backcrossing potential remain to be investigated, current findings provide proof-of-concept that interspecific hybridization may produce genotypes with enhanced climate resilience, and has the potential to increase the success of coral reef restoration initiatives.

The bacterial and microalgal endosymbiont (Symbiodiniaceae spp.) communities associated with corals have important roles in their health and resilience, yet little is known about the factors driving their succession during early coral life stages. Using 16S rRNA gene and ITS2 metabarcoding, we compared these communities in four Acropora coral species and their hybrids obtained from two laboratory crosses (Acropora tenuis × Acropora loripes and Acropora sarmentosa × Acropora florida) across the parental, recruit (7 months old) and juvenile (2 years old) life stages. We tested whether microbiomes differed between (a) life stages, (b) hybrids and purebreds, and (c) treatment conditions (ambient/elevated temperature and pCO2). Microbial communities of early life stage corals were highly diverse, lacked host specificity and were primarily determined by treatment conditions. Over time, a winnowing process occurred, and distinct microbial communities developed between the two species pair crosses by 2 years of age, irrespective of hybrid or purebred status. These findings suggest that the microbial communities of corals have a period of flexibility prior to adulthood, which can be valuable to future research aimed at the manipulation of coral microbial communities.

Early life stages of most coral species acquire microalgal endosymbionts (Symbiodiniaceae) from the environment, but whether exogenous symbiont uptake is possible in the adult life stage is unclear. Deep sequencing of the Symbiodiniaceae ITS2 genetic marker has revealed novel symbionts in adult corals following bleaching; however these strains may have already been present at densities below detection limits. To test whether acquisition of symbionts from the environment occurs, we subjected adult fragments of corals (six species in four families) to a chemical bleaching treatment (menthol and DCMU). The treatment reduced the native microalgal symbiont abundance to below 2% of their starting densities. The bleached corals were then inoculated with a cultured Cladocopium C1acro strain. Genotyping of the Symbiodiniaceae communities before bleaching and after reinoculation showed that fragments of all six coral species acquired the Cladocopium C1acro strain used for inoculation. Our results provide strong evidence for the uptake of Symbiodiniaceae from the environment by adult corals. We also demonstrate the feasibility of chemical bleaching followed by reinoculation to manipulate the Symbiodiniaceae communities of adult corals, providing an innovative approach to establish new symbioses between adult corals and heat-evolved microalgal symbionts, which could prove highly relevant to coral reef restoration efforts.

A comprehensive series of nuclear tests were carried out by the United States at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands, especially between 1952 and 1958. A Porites Lutea coral that was growing in the Enewetak lagoon within a few km of all of the high-yield tests contains a continuous record of isotopes, which are of interest (e.g. C,U, Pu) through the testing period. Prior to the present work,C measurements at ∼2-month resolution had shown pronounced peaks in the ΔC data that coincided with the times at which tests were conducted. Here we report measurements of U andPu on the same coral using accelerator mass spectrometry, and again find prominent peaks in the concentrations of these isotopes that closely follow those in C. Consistent with theC data, the magnitudes of these peaks do not, however, correlate well with the explosive yields of the corresponding tests, indicating that smaller tests probably contributed disproportionately to the debris that fell in the lagoon. Additional information about the different tests can also be obtained from the U/Pu and Pu/Pu ratios, which are found to vary dramatically over the testing period. In particular, the first thermonuclear test, Ivy-Mike, has characteristic U/Pu and Pu/Pu signatures which are diagnostic of the first arrival of nuclear test material in various archives.

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Marine microalgae are a diverse group of microscopic eukaryotic and prokaryotic organisms capable of photosynthesis. They are important primary producers and carbon sinks but their physiology and persistence are severely affected by global climate change. Powerful experimental evolution technologies are being used to examine the potential of microalgae to respond adaptively to current and predicted future conditions, as well as to develop resources to facilitate species conservation and restoration of ecosystem functions. This review synthesizes findings and insights from experimental evolution studies of marine microalgae in response to elevated temperature and/or pCO2. Adaptation to these environmental conditions has been observed in many studies of marine dinoflagellates, diatoms and coccolithophores. An enhancement in traits such as growth and photo‐physiological performance and an increase in upper thermal limit have been shown to be possible, although the extent and rate of change differ between microalgal taxa. Studies employing multiple monoclonal replicates showed variation in responses among replicates and revealed the stochasticity of mutations. The work to date is already providing valuable information on species’ climate sensitivity or resilience to managers and policymakers but extrapolating these insights to ecosystem‐ and community‐level impacts continues to be a challenge. We recommend future work should include in situ experiments, diurnal and seasonal fluctuations, multiple drivers and multiple starting genotypes. Fitness trade‐offs, stable versus plastic responses and the genetic bases of the changes also need investigating, and the incorporation of genome resequencing into experimental designs will be invaluable.