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Wow! That's really salty (~46 ppt)! Interestingly, there is some literature suggesting that higher salinity can protect against bleaching, but your point is well taken: what is true for aiptasia is not necessarily true for reef-building corals. That's why I want to repeat my experiments in...

I'm critically testing the dominant hypothesis about how heat-stress causes symbiotic cnidarian bleaching. I refer to this hypothesis as the reactive oxygen species (ROS)-induced bleaching hypothesis. The original idea, first popularized by Michael Lesser in the 1990s, was that the...

The aquaria are in Lane building. Our lab (John Pringle's lab) studies cnidarian-dinoflagellate symbioses. We mostly work with aiptasia in lab, but some of my lab mates have done work on corals as well. The aquaria are primarily for enjoyment and outreach (showing a bit of diversity of corals...

These softies have taken over my aquaria at work and I need to make room for some hard corals. These are big, healthy, and easy to keep soft corals. I'll rip them off the rocks for you when you arrive. See the pics. Pick up in the Stanford School of Medicine, although I go to the East Bay pretty...

My 10 gallon AIO tank at work just has a 1/2" drain drilled about 1/2" from the top in the back compartment. This is ~1/2" above the normal water line in this compartment and about equal to the water line in this compartment if I turn off the return pump. Tubing connects this drain to a 5 gal...

I wasn't accusing you of referring to it as an infection @IOnceWasLegend! I just wanted to make it clear to others that the link you provided did not give any evidence of an infection. I'm not sure of the exact number of coral genomes that have been sequenced, but we have sequences for at least...

I would caution against calling this an "infection", as it is not clear that any infectious agent is involved. This may simply be the corals responding to some change in conditions by expressing genes for GFP (or another fluorescent protein/pigment) that they already had in their genomes, like...

Thanks for the compliment @IOnceWasLegend! Given the current economic situation and the insanely competitive nature of the academic job market these days, I may need this skill... Thanks to BAR for letting me practice with/on you! I would guess that if genes for GFP are spreading to corals, the...

Technically, GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) is a protein naturally produced by a species of jellyfish (Aequorea victoria), but researchers now use the name GFP to refer to a large number of structurally similar naturally occurring and artificially modified fluorescent proteins. Corals produce...

Tridacna clams, and many types of coral, produce larvae that do not contain algal symbionts. The larvae or post-settlement adult phases of these animals must obtain their symbionts from the environment. This mode of symbiont acquisition is called horizontal transmission. Some coral species...

Whenever the SARS-COV-2 pandemic is under control, I'd enjoy a discussion with you all at a meeting! I'm happy to share any knowledge I have and it's always gratifying to find that someone is interested in my and my colleagues' work :) Plus, through Stanford I have access to almost all online...

I'd be happy to attend/speak at a club meeting, but most of my "uncommon" knowledge within the reefing community isn't very useful/practical. I'm no better, and often worse, at keeping corals alive and thriving than you all are!

TLDR: "Browning" does not indicate the coral/anemone is unhealthy, just that it isn't producing the fluorescent pigments we think are so pretty under its current environmental conditions. "Bleaching" occurs when a coral/anemone expels most/all of its "zoox" due to some stress, most famously high...

B-rate movie plot? [emoji13] I'll be lucky if I can just find a few proteins and signal molecules involved in the establishment and breakdown of symbiosis... Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

Np. It must've been hard to catch the first time! Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

In summary: I'm working on making genetically modified Aiptasia to help understand coral bleaching in more detail. Hopefully this understanding will help researchers come up with ways to limit the impending loss of most of the world's coral reefs. In more detail: I'm studying...

If anyone still has a couple Berghia nudis, I'd like a few. I have an infinite supply of Aiptasia and may be able to breed them to give back to the community.

I'll take him if he's still available.

Still have the pulsing xenia available?

Anybody still have some Berghia nudis? Given my job, I think I'll have food for them indefinitely... Maybe I can even get them to reproduce so I can give some back to the community.