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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Adriana Humanes Schumann, Dr James GuestORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2026 The Authors. Extreme climatic events are reshaping ecosystems worldwide as individual organisms vary markedly in their ability to withstand these disturbances. Deciphering patterns of persistence on local scales is therefore critical for predicting biodiversity trajectories under intensifying climate extremes. In this study, we examined variation in thermal stress responses among individuals of the coral Stylophora pistillata species complex during a heatwave at Heron Island Reef, Australia. More than half of the focal coral colonies died on the reef, and survival of coral fragments maintained under ex situ common thermal stress conditions was significantly correlated with the survival of their source colony. This demonstrates that survival differences result largely from biological factors rather than differential thermal exposure across reef habitats. Under common garden conditions, we observed striking differences in bleaching severity and survival times among three sympatric cryptic taxa and their highly host-specific symbiont community. Within the most locally common taxon, corals from historically warmer and more seasonally variable reef habitats seem more susceptible to bleaching, contrary to expectations. Together, these results reveal how biological differences among cryptic taxa and among individuals can shape coral responses during a heatwave and advance our understanding of coral vulnerability in a rapidly warming world.
Author(s): Meziere Z, Byrne I, Khalil A, Popovic I, Humanes A, Guest JR, Chan CX, Riginos C, McGuigan K
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Year: 2026
Volume: 293
Issue: 2072
Online publication date: 03/06/2026
Acceptance date: 05/05/2026
Date deposited: 23/06/2026
ISSN (print): 0962-8452
ISSN (electronic): 1471-2954
Publisher: Royal Society Publishing
URL: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2026.0890
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2026.0890
Data Access Statement: Raw sequence data are available on the NCBI Sequence Read Archive under the BioProjects PRJNA1358725 (host whole-genome sequencing) and PRJNA1441812 (Symbiodiniaceae ITS2 sequencing). Metadata for sampled coral colonies is available on GEOME under the GUID https://n2t.net/ark:/21547/Giu2. Scripts and data to reproduce analyses and figures are available on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19960484).
PubMed id: 42229924
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