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Mechanisms For The Persistence Of The Coral Holobiont In The Warming Oceans Of The Anthropocene, Daniel G. Merselis

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Coral Reefs are rapidly deteriorating in response to an onslaught of human-mediated stressors. Just one stressor alone, climate change, may extirpate coral reef ecosystems within a human lifetime, threatening societal and ecological catastrophe. Reef-derived ecosystem services are crucial for sustenance, coastal protection, and economic prosperity in over 100 countries. Near-term human decisions will determine whether reef-corals, the ecosystems they engineer, the 25% of marine biodiversity they support, and the human communities that depend upon them can be protected. My dissertation aims to characterize the potential for corals' adaptive mechanisms to facilitate their continued survival- information which will only represent hope …