Data from: Maternal effects and Symbiodinium community composition drive differential patterns in juvenile survival in the coral Acropora tenuis

Coral endosymbionts in the dinoflagellate genus Symbiodinium are known to
impact host physiology and have led to the evolution of reef-building, but
less is known about how symbiotic communities in early life-history stages
and their interactions with host parental identity shape the structure of
coral communities on reefs. Differentiating the roles of environmental and
biological factors driving variation in population demographic processes,
particularly larval settlement, early juvenile survival and the onset of
symbiosis is key to understanding how coral communities are structured and
to predicting how they are likely to respond to climate change. We show
that maternal effects (that here include genetic and/or effects related to
the maternal environment) can explain nearly 24% of variation in larval
settlement success and 5–17% of variation in juvenile survival in an
experimental study of the reef-building scleractinian coral, Acropora
tenuis. After 25 days on the reef, Symbiodinium communities associated
with juvenile corals differed significantly between high mortality and low
mortality families based on estimates of taxonomic richness, composition
and relative abundance of taxa. Our results highlight that maternal and
familial effects significantly explain variation in juvenile survival and
symbiont communities in a broadcast-spawning coral, with Symbiodinium type
A3 possibly a critical symbiotic partner during this early life stage.