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Dryad

Data from: Natural thermal stress-hardening of corals through cold temperature pulses in the Thai Andaman Sea

Data files

Feb 13, 2024 version files 8.53 MB

Abstract

Stress-hardening by environmental priming could increase the odds for corals to resist ocean warming. Natural environmental fluctuations, such as those observed on offshore reefs in the Andaman Sea, provide an ideal natural environment to study these effects. Here, internal waves (IW) generate short cold-water pulses that peak from January to June and are absent from August to November. Additionally, only western shores of islands are exposed to this stress-hardening stimulus of IWs, while eastern shores remain sheltered. Therefore, this study examined (1) whether exposed corals were more heat stress resistant than their sheltered conspecifics and (2) whether this trait would persist during the season of stimulus absence. We exemplify that thermal regimes featuring cold-temperature pulses successfully induced thermal stress-hardening in corals. Corals from the IW-sheltered shore responded strongly to heat stress irrespective of the season, while stress responses of IW-exposed corals were either undetectable (during stimulus presence) or very weak (during stimulus absence). However, this demonstrates the relevance of stimulus re-occurrence in maintaining heat resistance. Furthermore, priming stimuli do not need to exceed certain upper thermal thresholds to be effective and we argue that cooling pulses represent a safer stress-hardening regimen potentially implemented in conservation strategies since it avoids warming-stress accumulation.