NCCOS Assessment: Effects of three pesticides on the survival and settlement behavior of Caribbean coral larvae (NCEI Accession 0303148)

This project investigates the lethal and sublethal effects of three pesticides (Thiamethomoxamine, Dinotefuran, and Acetamiprid) on the survival of the corals Arcropora cervicornis and Orbicella faveolata larvae after 48 hours of exposure and on the settlement behavior of Acropora cervicornis larvae after 7 days of exposure. This dataset includes coral counts at discrete time periods for each treatment: for the larval mortality assay, living coral larvae were counted at the experiment start (t=0) and end (t=48) of the 48-hour experiment; for the larval settlement assay, living coral larvae were counted at the experiment start (t=0), and throughout the 7-day experiment duration (t=48, t=72, t=96, t=144), and were counted according to their specific developmental morphologies at the experiment end (t=144). All larval mortality experiments were performed at the Florida Bay Interagency Science Center (Key Largo, FL); larval settlement experiments were performed at the NOAA Hollings Marine Laboratory (Charleston, SC). Acropora cervicornis larvae were obtained from the University of North Carolina Wilmington Reproduction and Evolutionary Ecology- Fogarty Lab in September 2022; Orbicella faveolata larvae were obtained from wild-caught spawn (North Dry Rocks Reef, Florida Keys) collected by the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Center in August 2022. Results from these experiments indicate that the three tested pesticides did not have any significant impact on larval survival or settlement behavior in the tested species.