Award: IOS-1728734

Understanding diseases in marine ecosystems is increasingly important given that the impact of coral diseases will likely continue to increase in both intensity and geographic extent in the future. However, our ability to understand or manage diseases in coral reef ecosystems has been hampered by the lack of a systematic approach to understanding the pathology and pathogenesis of diseases in corals using multiple epidemiological tools. There is surprisingly little information on whether particular diseases are transmissible to neighboring conspecifics, or whether some diseases are infectious across species boundaries. If diseases are transmissible, we need to understand under which environmental circumstances transmission may be occurring and identify the causative agent. Understanding coral epidemiology is the first step in the potential remediation of coral disease outbreaks. An outbreak of tissue loss disease in multiple species of corals across the Florida reef tract provided a unique but time-sensitive opportunity to address critical questions about disease pathogenesis in corals. We directly examined disease transmission dynamics, explored potential pathogens through both culture-dependent and culture-independent methods, and examined potential beneficial coral-associated microbes to help explain this multi-species coral die-off. The combined efforts of multiple researchers and agencies, addressing different components of the disease outbreak, provided much needed answers to questions concerning the host-pathogen dynamics of marine diseases, which will likely be applicable to not only the Florida reefs, but to coral diseases world-wide. Last Modified: 05/13/2019 Submitted by: Claudia Hase