Award: OCE-2316579

In the summer of 2022, an unknown coral disease was observed to be causing mortality on the remote reefs of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary in the northwest Gulf of America/Mexico. These remarkable reefs have historically had low disease incidence, and it was feared that this unknown disease could be stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). This project’s team includes marine ecologists, coral epidemiologists, molecular ecologists, and modelers, and the team has spent years integrating methodologies to understand coral diseases around the world, and in the US Virgin Islands (NSF # 2316579).

This project aimed to apply the team’s collective expertise towards understanding the nature and origin of this disease outbreak. By collecting information on the morphological characteristics of the disease and fate tracking diseased and healthy colonies, we have demonstrated that ecological characteristics of the disease do not align with species susceptibility, lesion behavior, and mortality rates known for SCTLD. Analysis of the microbial characteristics of the disease from samples analyzed so far show limited uniformity across diseased samples and also healthy samples, suggesting high microbial diversity and no consistent microbial etiology. However, our collaborative group has used coupled biophysical models to demonstrate that SCTLD could arrive at these remote reefs as dispersing passive particles, released from upstream reefs.  Results from this collaborative project will be further compared to samples and simulations from a larger collaborative project that targeted known SCTLD affected colonies in the U.S. Virgin Islands. By leveraging the results of these projects combined, we will greatly enhance our understanding of SCTLD and coral disease dynamics within the Caribbean.

This project has supported the field and laboratory work of three graduate and one undergraduate students, and led to oral presentations at the 2025 Benthic Ecology Meeting.

Last Modified: 06/30/2025
Modified by: Marilyn Brandt