Effects of heat and hyposalinity on the gene expression in Acropora pruinosa larvae

Climate change impacts include sea surface temperature increase and also more intense cyclones and rainstorm events. This project mainly investigated the combined effect of elevated temperature and hyposalinity on the larval stages of coral from a transcriptomic perspective. Our results showed that thermal and salinity stresses triggered the expression of different gene sets in coral larvae, and an additive effect was observed in the combined stress treatment. While all these responsive mechanisms involve energy expenditure, it helps explaining the reduction of larval settlement under both thermal and hyposalinity stresses.