Exploring the addition of complex B-vitamins and Zinc, in the Red Sea coral, Acropora hemprichii

Abstract

A diversity of human-assisted approaches to rehabilitate and boost coral health have been suggested and investigated throughout the past years. Vitamins and trace-metal supplementation is a well-known strategy in human medicine and aquaculture, but vitamin addition is not currently actively tested for coral growth and recovery. These molecules are essential cofactors that have been correlated with coral thermal resistance and upregulated in corals treated with beneficial microorganisms (i.e., probiotics). To assess the effects of B12, B6 and zinc supplementation on coral health, we conducted a 2-month experiment in an open-closed-loop system mesocosm joined to a peristaltic pump continuously dosing the vitamins and/or zinc to individual 250 L tanks. Fragments of five different colonies of Acropora hemprichii were randomly distributed into the respective treatment tanks (B12, B6, zinc, multi-treatment and control). After 21 days, the corals were exposed to a pulse (1 day) of thermal stress, followed by three weeks of recovery. Substantial mortality (55%) in the control treatment was observed during the stress and recovery, with B12, B6, zinc and multi treatments exhibiting significantly less mortality (

Date of Award	Jul 2023
Original language	English (US)
Awarding Institution	Biological, Environmental Sciences and Engineering
Supervisor	Raquel Peixoto (Supervisor)