Data from: Genomic determinants of coral heat tolerance across latitudes

As global warming continues, reef-building corals could avoid local
population declines through “genetic rescue” involving exchange of
heat-tolerant genotypes across latitudes, but only if latitudinal
variation in thermal tolerance is heritable. Here, we show an
up–to–10-fold increase in odds of survival of coral larvae under heat
stress when their parents come from a warmer lower-latitude location.
Elevated thermal tolerance was associated with heritable differences in
expression of oxidative, extracellular, transport, and mitochondrial
functions that indicated a lack of prior stress. Moreover, two genomic
regions strongly responded to selection for thermal tolerance in
interlatitudinal crosses. These results demonstrate that variation in
coral thermal tolerance across latitudes has a strong genetic basis and
could serve as raw material for natural selection.