Journal of Marine Science: Research & Development
Open Access

Abstract

In this review, we discuss the effects that climate change is having on corals, their phagocytic-like cell responses to dysfunctional cells and/or disease, and the mechanisms they potentially use to adapt to changing environmental conditions.A number of hypotheses are explored including whether a coral holobiont is more or less susceptible to stress than other coral types, why infection seems less prevalent in some coral vs. others, and whether memory is part of their evolutionary design allowing for better immunological specificity and mechanisms for adaptive protective immunity. For example, the immune system ?complement? in vertebrates was assumed to be confined to a deuterostome lineage. However, such a complement also occurs in lower invertebrates like corals and is used to recognize ?self ? vs. ?not-self ? and different clades of zooxanthellae. Similarly, Cnidarians also display allorecognition/xenorecognition. To take this one step further, corals seem to possess a functional blocking mechanism for dinoflagellates vs. pathogens ? and the differences between these two sets of taxa may hold the key to better understanding the foundation of immune systems in corals and other invertebrates. This has far reaching evolutionary consequences because it potentially provides evidence for the existence of immunological specificity and memory in invertebrates, which may also have human health implications.

Biography

Kevin B Strychar is an Associate Professor at the Annis Water Resources Institute ? Grand Valley State University located in Muskegon, Michigan, USA. He has conducted research on coral reefs and marine ecosystems for ~13 years in the Caribbean and Great Barrier Reef, Australia. He has 34 publications and 83 conference presentations and serves as an adjunct professor at Michigan State University. He has also served as an Asst. Professor at Texas A&M University; Killam Post Doctoral Fellow, Dalhousie University (Canada); and Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Connecticut. He is an Assoc. Editor for International Journal of Biology, the journal Water, and the International Journal of Water and Wastewater Treatment. His PhD is in Biology, with an emphasis in Marine Conservation.