As global warming continues, reef-building corals could avoid local population declines through “genetic rescue” involving exchange of heat-tolerant genotypes across latitudes, but only if latitudinal variation in thermal tolerance is heritable. Here, we show an up–to–10-fold increase in odds of survival of coral larvae under heat stress when their parents come from a warmer lower-latitude location. Elevated thermal tolerance was associated with heritable differences in expression of oxidative, extracellular, transport, and mitochondrial functions that indicated a lack of prior stress. Moreover, two genomic regions strongly responded to selection for thermal tolerance in interlatitudinal crosses. These results demonstrate that variation in coral thermal tolerance across latitudes has a strong genetic basis and could serve as raw material for natural selection.
Linkage map data for Acropora millepora
2bRAD-based linkage map data
Amillepora_linkageMapData_dixon2015.txt
tag-based RNAseq counts of larval families
The samples names identify the cross: first letter- dam, second letted - sire, number - culture replicate. The parents (from A to D) are the same as used for the heat stress experiment (see another tag-seq dataset). The parents A and B are from Orpheus Island (Central GBR), parents C and D are from Princess Charlotte Bay (Northern GBR). The annotations for the genes ("isogroups") are in the transcriptome bundle included with this submission.
dixon15_tagSeq_larvalCounts.txt
tag-based RNAseq counts for heat stress experiment in adult corals
Response of adult corals to heat stress. Letter identifies a coral colony, numbers 1 to 3 are controls fragments (ambient temperature, 28C), numbers 4 to 6 are heat-stressed fragments (3 days at 31.5C). Colonies A and B are from Orpheus Island (Central GBR), colonies C and D are from Princess Charlotte Bay (Northern GBR). These corals are the same as used as parents to produce larval cohorts (see another tag-seq dataset). The annotations for the genes ("isogroups") are in the transcriptome bundle included with this submission.
dixon15_tagSeq_adultCounts.txt
Survival of coral larvae at 35.5C
The table contains counts of larvae surviving after a certain time at 35.5C, out of the initial number of 20 (the only exception is family AB replicate 2, which started with 40 larvae). The parental colonies (A through D) are the same as used for heat stress experiment (see tag-seq data set for heat stress in adults). Colonies A and B are from the Orpheus Island, colonies C and D are from Princess Charlotte Bay. Time is in hours.
dixon15_larvalHeatSurvival.csv
A.millepora transcriptome sequences and annotations
This transcriptome was published previously by Moya et al Mol. Ecol. 21, 2440–2454 (2012) and re-annotated for Dixon et al Science 2015 publication.
Amillepora_transcriptome_annotations_dixon2015.zip