Relationship between Phylogeny and Immunity Suggests Older Caribbean Coral Lineages Are More Resistant to Disease

Diseases affect coral species fitness and contribute significantly to the deterioration of coral reefs. The increase in frequency and severity of disease outbreaks has made evaluating and determining coral resistance a priority. Phylogenetic patterns in immunity and disease can provide important ins...

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Main Authors:	Pinzón C., Jorge H., Beach-Letendre, Joshuah, Weil, Ernesto, Mydlarz, Laura D.
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2014
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4136782/

id	pubmed-4136782
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-41367822014-08-20 Relationship between Phylogeny and Immunity Suggests Older Caribbean Coral Lineages Are More Resistant to Disease Pinzón C., Jorge H. Beach-Letendre, Joshuah Weil, Ernesto Mydlarz, Laura D. Research Article Diseases affect coral species fitness and contribute significantly to the deterioration of coral reefs. The increase in frequency and severity of disease outbreaks has made evaluating and determining coral resistance a priority. Phylogenetic patterns in immunity and disease can provide important insight to how corals may respond to current and future environmental and/or biologically induced diseases. The purpose of this study was to determine if immunity, number of diseases and disease prevalence show a phylogenetic signal among Caribbean corals. We characterized the constitutive levels of six distinct innate immune traits in 14 Caribbean coral species and tested for the presence of a phylogenetic signal on each trait. Results indicate that constitutive levels of some individual immune related processes (i.e. melanin concentration, peroxidase and inhibition of bacterial growth), as well as their combination show a phylogenetic signal. Additionally, both the number of diseases affecting each species and disease prevalence (as measures of disease burden) show a significant phylogenetic signal. The phylogenetic signal of immune related processes, combined with estimates of species divergence times, indicates that among the studied species, those belonging to older lineages tend to resist/fight infections better than more recently diverged coral lineages. This result, combined with the increasing stressful conditions on corals in the Caribbean, suggest that future reefs in the region will likely be dominated by older lineages while modern species may face local population declines and/or geographic extinction. Public Library of Science 2014-08-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4136782/ /pubmed/25133685 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104787 Text en © 2014 Pinzón C http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Pinzón C., Jorge H. Beach-Letendre, Joshuah Weil, Ernesto Mydlarz, Laura D.
spellingShingle	Pinzón C., Jorge H. Beach-Letendre, Joshuah Weil, Ernesto Mydlarz, Laura D. Relationship between Phylogeny and Immunity Suggests Older Caribbean Coral Lineages Are More Resistant to Disease
author_facet	Pinzón C., Jorge H. Beach-Letendre, Joshuah Weil, Ernesto Mydlarz, Laura D.
author_sort	Pinzón C., Jorge H.
title	Relationship between Phylogeny and Immunity Suggests Older Caribbean Coral Lineages Are More Resistant to Disease
title_short	Relationship between Phylogeny and Immunity Suggests Older Caribbean Coral Lineages Are More Resistant to Disease
title_full	Relationship between Phylogeny and Immunity Suggests Older Caribbean Coral Lineages Are More Resistant to Disease
title_fullStr	Relationship between Phylogeny and Immunity Suggests Older Caribbean Coral Lineages Are More Resistant to Disease
title_full_unstemmed	Relationship between Phylogeny and Immunity Suggests Older Caribbean Coral Lineages Are More Resistant to Disease
title_sort	relationship between phylogeny and immunity suggests older caribbean coral lineages are more resistant to disease
description	Diseases affect coral species fitness and contribute significantly to the deterioration of coral reefs. The increase in frequency and severity of disease outbreaks has made evaluating and determining coral resistance a priority. Phylogenetic patterns in immunity and disease can provide important insight to how corals may respond to current and future environmental and/or biologically induced diseases. The purpose of this study was to determine if immunity, number of diseases and disease prevalence show a phylogenetic signal among Caribbean corals. We characterized the constitutive levels of six distinct innate immune traits in 14 Caribbean coral species and tested for the presence of a phylogenetic signal on each trait. Results indicate that constitutive levels of some individual immune related processes (i.e. melanin concentration, peroxidase and inhibition of bacterial growth), as well as their combination show a phylogenetic signal. Additionally, both the number of diseases affecting each species and disease prevalence (as measures of disease burden) show a significant phylogenetic signal. The phylogenetic signal of immune related processes, combined with estimates of species divergence times, indicates that among the studied species, those belonging to older lineages tend to resist/fight infections better than more recently diverged coral lineages. This result, combined with the increasing stressful conditions on corals in the Caribbean, suggest that future reefs in the region will likely be dominated by older lineages while modern species may face local population declines and/or geographic extinction.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2014
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4136782/
_version_	1613125188733370368

Relationship between Phylogeny and Immunity Suggests Older Caribbean Coral Lineages Are More Resistant to Disease

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