Genomic determinants of coral heat tolerance across latitudes

• Autores: Groves B. Dixon, Sarah W. Davies, Galina V. Aglyamova
• Localización: Science, ISSN 0036-8075, Vol. 348, Nº 6242, 2015, págs. 1460-1462
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • As global warming continues, reef-building corals could avoid local population declines through “genetic rescue” involving exchange of heat-tolerant genotypes across latitudes, but only if latitudinal variation in thermal tolerance is heritable. Here, we show an up–to–10-fold increase in odds of survival of coral larvae under heat stress when their parents come from a warmer lower-latitude location. Elevated thermal tolerance was associated with heritable differences in expression of oxidative, extracellular, transport, and mitochondrial functions that indicated a lack of prior stress. Moreover, two genomic regions strongly responded to selection for thermal tolerance in interlatitudinal crosses. These results demonstrate that variation in coral thermal tolerance across latitudes has a strong genetic basis and could serve as raw material for natural selection.