Aiptasia Zooxanthellae Transfer with Bleached Zoanthid Fragments | Research Help

[KarunAiptasiaResearch]

Hello Everyone,

I am doing a science research project in Highschool. I am currently working on creating a project outline on extracting the symbiodinium from samples of Aiptasia Pallida and introducing said symbiodinium to bleached zoanthid fragments. With the hopes of reviving the fragments and increasing the thermal resilience of the zoanthids.

I wanted to see if any researchers or aquarists with experience could confirm that this would be possible. A study by Buerger et. al extracted Aiptasia symbiodinium then induced heat stress on the symbiodinium in vitro then reintroduced the symbiodinium to the host coral which lacked the dinoflagellates. https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.aba2498

I wanted to take the resilient Aiptasia symbiodinium and infuse it into the not so resilient zoanthids.

I plan on extracting the Aiptasia symbiodinium by blending the Aiptasia then centrifuging to separate the symbiodinium cells. Once I have collected enough of the algae I would be able to introduce it to bleached zoanthid fragments. The bleached fragments should accept the symbiodinium, at least I think so.

I plan in introducing the Aiptasia symbiodinium to the zoanthids by putting them in the same tank. According to the study I linked above this should work.

I just wanted to get other peoples' opinions on this, and see if others think it is possible to transfer the symbiodinium to another coral species. I believe its pretty doable due to the fact that cnidarians utilize very similar fundamental zooxanthellae, and many corals have multiple types of zooxanthellae within the host at one time.

Any help is appreciated!


Thank you,
KarunAiptasiaResearch

 

[taricha]

The paper you linked pulled symbiodinium from acropora tenuis, not aiptasia...
"In brief, a heterogeneous C. goreauicell mixture was isolated from an Acropora tenuis coral colony collected at Magnetic Island, central GBR in 2010."

I'm not sure if the symbionts in aiptasia are the same or similar enough to those in zoanthids.
Did you mean to link a different paper?

As a general question on making corals switch symbionts - this can be done but it usually requires a bleaching event. So you'd have to force a bleaching of the zoas without killing them. That might be difficult.

If you want to lay out the steps for how this could be done in theory - that sounds very possible.
If you want to actually do this - then I don't know. That paper is probably not a good lead to follow - they got heat tolerant symbiont types by growing cultured of the symbiont algae under increasing heat-stress for 4 years and selecting the fittest types as they gradually turned up the temp.

 

[Create New]

Anything happen with this experiment?