Parkinson John Everett, Yang Sung-Yin, Kawamura Iori, Byron Gordon, Todd Peter Alan, Reimer James Davis
Molecular Invertebrate Systematics and Ecology Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Marine Science, Faculty of Science, University of the Ryukyus , Nishihara, Okinawa , Japan.
Molecular Invertebrate Systematics and Ecology Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Biology, and Marine Science, Faculty of Science, University of the Ryukyus, Nishihara, Okinawa, Japan; Microbiology and Biochemistry of Secondary Metabolites Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Onna, Okinawa, Japan.
PeerJ. 2016 Mar 28;4:e1815. doi: 10.7717/peerj.1815. eCollection 2016.
Coral reef bleaching events are expected to become more frequent and severe in the near future as climate changes. The zoantharian Palythoa tuberculosa bleaches earlier than many scleractinian corals and may serve as an indicator species. Basic monitoring of such species could help to detect and even anticipate bleaching events, especially in areas where more sophisticated approaches that rely on buoy or satellite measurements of sea surface temperature are unavailable or too coarse. One simple and inexpensive monitoring method involves training volunteers to record observations of host color as a proxy for symbiosis quality. Here, we trained university students to take the 'color fingerprint' of a reef by assessing the color of multiple randomly selected colonies of P. tuberculosa at one time point in Okinawa Island, Japan. We tested the reliability of the students' color scores and whether they matched expectations based on previous monthly monitoring of tagged colonies at the same locations. We also measured three traditional metrics of symbiosis quality for comparison: symbiont morphological condition, cell density, and chlorophyll a content. We found that P. tuberculosa color score, although highly correlated among observers, provided little predictive power for the other variables. This was likely due to inherent variation in colony color among generally healthy zoantharians in midwinter, as well as low sample size and brief training owing to the course structure. Despite certain limitations of P. tuberculosa as a focal organism, the citizen science approach to color monitoring has promise, and we outline steps that could improve similar efforts in the future.
随着气候变化，预计珊瑚礁白化事件在不久的将来会变得更加频繁和严重。纽扣珊瑚比许多石珊瑚更早出现白化，可能作为指示物种。对这类物种进行基本监测有助于发现甚至预测白化事件，特别是在那些无法获得或过于粗略的依赖浮标或卫星测量海面温度的更复杂方法的地区。一种简单且成本低廉的监测方法是培训志愿者记录宿主颜色观察结果，以此作为共生质量的替代指标。在此，我们培训大学生在日本冲绳岛的一个时间点，通过评估多个随机选择的纽扣珊瑚群落的颜色来获取珊瑚礁的“颜色指纹”。我们测试了学生颜色评分的可靠性，以及这些评分是否与基于此前对相同地点标记群落的月度监测得出的预期相符。我们还测量了共生质量的三个传统指标用于比较：共生体形态状况、细胞密度和叶绿素a含量。我们发现，纽扣珊瑚颜色评分虽然在观察者之间具有高度相关性，但对其他变量的预测能力很弱。这可能是由于冬季中期一般健康的纽扣珊瑚群落颜色存在固有差异，以及由于课程结构导致样本量小和培训时间短。尽管纽扣珊瑚作为重点研究生物存在一定局限性，但公民科学颜色监测方法具有前景，我们概述了未来可改进类似工作的步骤。
