Reintro: I'm now in my final year and preparing to defend! I'd revamp this to: patterns of specificity in coral-algal mutualisms, and then what that means for their ecology and evolution.
A lot of my work has since taken a turn into octocoral symbionts, plus some work in other Cnidarians 🧪 (🪸📷⬇️)
A lot of my work has since taken a turn into octocoral symbionts, plus some work in other Cnidarians 🧪 (🪸📷⬇️)
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Often, this is a very intimate symbiosis where one host coral colony can host ~99% of one species & often one clonal genotype
(Exceptions occur but are *very* rare)
I don't know about you, but if I relied on a mutualistic eukaryote living inside me for most of my food, I'd want to make sure it's a good fit for myself, and the environment I live in.
Sometimes species:species specific (Turnham et al 2021), but other times, we still find these wildly abundant generalists (Butler et al 2023 😉)
& not all symbionts are the same! Some prefer different hosts, regions, depth, etc, and also often react differently to stress