Nutrient transfer experiments with host coral and symbionts under varying environmental conditions conducted March 2014 and March 2015

Symbiotic mutualisms are essential to ecosystems and numerous species across the tree of life. For reef-building corals, the benefits of their association with endosymbiotic dinoflagellates differ within and across taxa, and nutrient exchange between these partners is influenced by environmental conditions. Furthermore, it is widely assumed that corals associated with symbionts in the genus Durusdinium tolerate high thermal stress at the expense of lower nutrient exchange to support coral growth. We traced both inorganic carbon (H13CO3–) and nitrate (15NO3–) uptake by divergent symbiont species and quantified nutrient transfer to the host coral under normal temperatures as well as in colonies exposed to high thermal stress. Colonies representative of diverse coral taxa associated with Durusdinium trenchii or Cladocopium spp. exhibited similar nutrient exchange under ambient conditions. In contrast, heat-exposed colonies with D. trenchii experienced less physiological stress than conspecifics with Cladocopium spp. while high carbon assimilation and host transfer was maintained. This discovery is different from the prevailing notion that these mutualisms inevitably suffer trade-offs in physiological performance. These findings emphasize that certain host-symbiont combinations adapted to high temperature equatorial environments; and why their increase in prevalence is likely important to the future productivity and stability of coral reef ecosystems.