Conditions of coral communities in the Gulf of Thailand: a decade after the 1998 severe bleaching event

Quantitative studies on the 2010 mass coral bleaching event in Thai waters

“…6). Previous studies showed that coral communities in the Gulf of Thailand faced a widespread seawater temperature anomaly in 1998 that resulted in mass coral bleaching and mortality (Yeemin et al 1998(Yeemin et al , 2009 (Brown and Suharsono 1990;Hoeksema 1991;Marshall and Baird 2000). However our results show that the coral bleaching intensity at Ko He and Ko Loan (in the Andaman Sea) was the highest although these study sites are in deeper areas.…”

“…myriophthalma, D. heliopora, F. favus, G. aspera, G. fascicularis, G. lobata, L. purpurea, M. tuber culata, P. daedalea, P. decussata and P. lutea. This bleach ing variation may be driven by variation between study sites in environmental factors that trigger the bleaching phenomenon (Glynn 1993, Marshall andBaird 2000;McClanahan et al 2007;Oxenford 2008 Mass coral bleaching episodes are commonly associated with loss of live coral cover in large areas and loss of coral species from local reef sites (Glynn 1988;Mumby et al 2001;McClanahan and Maina 2003;McClanahan 2004;Oxenford 2008;Yeemin et al 2009). In the present study, coral mortality trends during our surveys were obviously observed at the study sites in the Andaman Sea and the Western Gulf of Thailand.…”

“…Coral communities in the Gulf of Thailand experienced a widespread seawater temperature anomaly in 1998 that led to largescale coral bleaching and mortality (Yeemin et al 1998(Yeemin et al , 2009). In the Andaman Sea, coral reefs were affected from several coral bleaching events, such as in , 1995, 1998(Phongsuwan and Chansang 2000.…”

Coral Diversity at Losin Pinnacle, an Offshore Reef in the Gulf of Thailand: Toward a Future MPA

“…Widespread coral mortality from mass coral bleaching events between 1998 and 2010 in Thai waters has been reported previously (Yeemin et al, 2009;Phongsuwan and Chansang, 2012;Sutthacheep et al, 2013;Yucharoen et al, 2015). Coral reefs along the Gulf of Thailand experienced high mortality, and a subsequent loss of Acropora species was reported in the region (Yeemin et al, 2009;Hoeksema et al, 2013). High losses of Acropora corals from these reefs were alarming, as some Acropora species could face functional extinction in the eastern Gulf of Thailand (Yeemin et al, 2013b).…”

Development of a Novel Reference Transcriptome for Scleractinian Coral Porites lutea Using Single-Molecule Long-Read Isoform Sequencing (Iso-Seq)

“…The availability of transcriptome data from a number of coral species and their associated Symbiodinium allows us to probe the molecular stress response of the organisms to heat stress (Traylor-Knowles et al, 2011;Moya et al, 2012;Kenkel et al, 2013;Shinzato et al, 2014;Kitchen et al, 2015;Anderson et al, 2016;Davies et al, 2016). Here, we report the first reference transcriptome for a scleractinian coral Porites lutea, one of the dominant reef-builders in the Indo-West Pacific (Yeemin et al, 2009). We applied both short-read Ion S5 RNA sequencing and long-read Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) isoform sequencing (Iso-seq) to generate transcriptome sequences of P. lutea under normal and heat stress conditions.…”