Li, Jie, Liu, Yali, Zhang, Zhixin, Chen, Yu, Zhang, Jian, Yu, Haiyan, Zhang, Yingyi, Liu, Cong, Shao, Zhuang, Bourne, David G., Qu, Meng, Zhang, Si, and Lin, Qiang (2025) Genomic insights into the brooding reproduction and climate-driven dynamics of Pocillopora damicornis in the Anthropocene. Science China Life Sciences, 68 (8). pp. 2481-2483.

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Abstract

Dear Editor, Coral reefs sustain high biodiversity and have been referred to as the rainforests of the ocean. However, anthropogenic stressors have led to a global decline of coral reefs, partly due to the increasing scale, frequency, and intensity of coral bleaching events driven by global warming (Henley et al., 2024; Hughes et al., 2018). In the face of mounting anthropogenic stressors, the recovery and maintenance of scleractinian coral populations are crucial for the sustainability of coral reefs. The capacity to supply larval recruits is fundamental to population recovery and long-term persistence (Hughes et al., 2019). Given that reproduction and recruitment are essential to the replenishment and maintenance of coral populations, the interpretation of adaptations to future climate change relevant to reproductive modes is urgent. Advancements in coral omics studies enable us to explore their connections from the perspective of genomic evolution (Hu et al., 2021). Together with available coral genomic data, this study examined the genomic characteristics of the brooding coral Pocillopora damicornis on the Luhuitou fringing reef (Jiang et al., 2023). In addition, we examined the transcriptomic responses of this coral to heat stress, focusing on the impact of heat stress on reproduction-related gene expression. Furthermore, we reconstructed the demographic histories of several coral species with different reproductive modes and predicted their distributions under various climate change scenarios. Our goal was to elucidate the connection between coral adaptation and reproductive modes, offering insights into the resilience of P. damicornis, a widely distributed species, to projected future ocean temperatures.

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