The UK’s Horniman Museum and Gardens has accomplished the first successful in-vitro fetilization of captive coral when a collection of corals transplanted from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef in 2015, recently spawned.
The spawning event in December that released approximately 130,000 eggs from nice corals of two species – Acropora tenuis and Acropora millepora – was the result of a complex experiment. If you recall, the team moved gravid corals (already carrying eggs) halfway around the world, then replicating exactly the environmental conditions on the wild reef to allow them to spawn.
“We’ve seen captive corals spawn before at the Horniman, but this is the first time we’ve been able to successfully cross-fertilize them,” said Jamie Craggs, Aquarium Curator at the Horniman Museum and Gardens. “This proves the techniques and equipment used in our lab are working, and is a key step forward for Project Coral.”
Eight cross-fertilizations have now been carried out (each is of eggs and sperm from two corals of the same species) and thousands of coral ‘babies’ will be used by the Horniman and other institutions for further research into coral reproduction and early life stages.
The Horniman’s Project Coral has partners around the world working together to predictably spawn corals in captivity, in order to investigate, counter and repair the impact of climate change on coral reef health and reproduction.
Dr Mary Hagedorn PhD, of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute/Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, says: “The work that Horniman scientists, led by Jamie Craggs, are doing on closing the life-cycle in coral is ground-breaking. Although some coral species have been bred in captivity before, never have they been purposefully induced to spawn while being maintained under captive conditions. So, this is a world-first for coral reproduction. Climate change is profoundly altering the viability and genetic diversity of coral reefs around the world. This amazing break-through in ex situ breeding of coral opens the door to an array of conservation measures to sustain coral in captivity allowing them to become living-banks for coral reefs.”
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