ENVIRONMENT AND IMMUNITY

Anthropogenic climate change is devastating the Earth’s coral reefs, causing bleaching and increased rates of coral disease. However one area of hope for mitigating this loss lies within the coral immune system. The immune system is responsible for dictating the overall health of an organism. Incorporating immune function metrics into predictive frameworks for coral reef conservation will be crucial for accurate predictions of coral reef survival. However, our understanding of the coral immune system is still nascent, and even the definition of a healthy coral is still not really understood. This research aims to identify the role of the adaptive potential of the coral immune system in the face of climate change. This work combines multi-scale analysis from cell biology to genome level to identify the mechanisms and interactions of the immune system during environmental change to ultimately predict the likelihood of coral survival.