Severati, Andrea, Nordborg, F. Mikaela, Heyward, Andrew, Abdul Wahab, Muhammad A., Brunner, Christopher A., Montalvo-Proano, Jose, and Negri, Andrew P. (2024) The AutoSpawner system - Automated ex situ spawning and fertilisation of corals for reef restoration. Journal of Environmental Management, 366. 121886.

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Abstract

The restoration of reefs damaged by global and local pressures remains constrained by the scale of intervention currently feasible. Traditional methods for ex situ sexual propagation of corals produce limited materials, typically of limited genetic diversity and only sufficient for small field trials. The development and validation of new technologies to upscale and automate coral propagation is required to achieve logistically and financially feasible reef restoration at ecologically relevant scales. To address the need for upscaled production of genetically diverse material for use in reef restoration we designed an automated system (the AutoSpawner) for harvesting, fertilising and washing gametes from tropical broadcast-spawning corals. The system includes a novel high density dynamic fertilisation process, which enables the production of large numbers of fertilised coral eggs (>7 million per night for highly fecund species) without any downstream negative effects on larval quality. The functionality of the system and the quality of the produced larvae was assessed using multiple species from two coral families (Acroporidae and Merulinidae) across a range of spawning and gamete characteristics. We present the schematics and protocols required for automated sexual propagation of high-quality coral larvae using this novel system; and demonstrate that the time demands, and labour costs, associated with traditional manual-based sexual propagation of corals can be reduced by up to 113-fold using the AutoSpawner.

Item ID:	83308
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	0301-4797
Copyright Information:	© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-/nc-nd/4.0/).
Date Deposited:	15 Apr 2025 03:37
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1805 Marine systems and management > 180501 Assessment and management of benthic marine ecosystems @ 100%
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