Award: OCE-1838667

The goals of this Coral Bleaching Research Coordination Network (CBRCN) were to 1) develop experimental design, sample archiving, and data synthesis protocols, through three workshops and 2) facilitate the formation of interdisciplinary collaborative teams. These goals were addressed through four activity nodes: workshops, cyberseminars, student and Early Career Training, and RCN activity dissemination. The workshops were the centerpieces of the Coral Bleaching RCN and focus on four topics: 1) experimental design protocol framework design, 2) sample archiving protocol framework design, 3) data assimilation across scales, and 4) recommendations for the future of coral bleaching research. Invitations and selection of workshop participants and early career awardees were conducted in a way to optimize equity and diversity among participants and awardees. The project successfully met all goals. In the first workshop, we found that there were major gaps in how coral bleaching experiments were conducted (McLachlan et al 2020) and proposed a framework for streamlining and strengthening coral bleaching experiments (Grottoli et al 2021). Through the second workshop, we learned that there were many needs and strategies for collecting and preserving coral specimens (McLachlan et al 2021) and proposed a framework for optimizing coral preservation and enhancing collaborative opportunities for sharing specimens to maximize the information that could be learned from each sample (Vega Thurber et al 2022). In the third workshop, we explored the challenges to synthesizing data across these scales and identified what data and metadata is needed, and which processes could be prioritized, to enhance coral bleaching research across biological scales ranging from the molecular to the ocean basin scale (van Woesik et al 2022). Both the second and third workshops were conducted virtually due to the pandemic. Finally in the last workshop, we explored future directions for coral bleaching research including the need for embedded inclusiveness, capacity building as a foundation for excellence, the role of technology and innovation in coral research, and the role of coral bleaching researchers in shaping policy (Grottoli et al in prep). Integral to all workshops was purposeful networking opportunities that fostered many new collaborations among participants. The workshop outcomes were shared through publications, webinars, conference presentations, and the CBRCN website (https://u.osu.edu/grottoli.1/coral-bleaching-rcn/). In addition, 12 early career scientists were financially supported to pursue new skills or training. Four graduate students and two postdocs were also integral to the planning, content development, and execution of the workshops giving them first-hand experience in how to organize many competing ideas and network across academic disciplines. They were co-authors or lead authors on the resulting manuscripts and were active leaders for components of each workshop. Last Modified: 07/23/2024 Submitted by: AndreaGGrottoli