Identifying natural adaptive variation is key to managing and conserving reefs for the future, both in the context of conventional and novel interventions. A current bottleneck in adaptation research is the identification of tolerant corals and populations through rapid, high-throughput and non-invasive phenotypic assays of coral health and fitness.

In this collaborative project, our research partners from AIMS and Rutgers are adding Coral Phenomics to the toolkit for assessing coral fitness by combining state of the art rapid heat stress experiments with high throughput coral phenotyping using hyperspectral imaging (HSI), metabolite analysis, and assessment of protein expression.