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Abstract The elkhorn coral,Acropora palmata, was historically a major reef-building species in the Caribbean, but has suffered devastating declines in recent decades. Despite significant restoration efforts in Florida, the marine heatwave of 2023 caused severe bleaching and mortality to both wild and restored colonies. To understand the disastrous impacts, we evaluated the variation in heat tolerance among Florida’sA. palmatapopulation prior to the event. In 2022, we used rapid acute heat stress assays to assess the thermal tolerance of 172 adult colonies (125 unique genets) from four nurseries. We found variation in thermal tolerance (4.17°C range in ED50) that was attributed to nursery location (17.2% of variation), genet (25.9%), and symbiont abundance (15.6%). Algal symbiont type, however, was the strongest predictor of thermal performance, with the few (n = 10) colonies hostingDurusdiniumbeing, on average, 1.9°C more thermally tolerant than corals hostingSymbiodinium. This difference would have decreased the effective heat stress accumulation during the 2023 event by ~92%. Therefore, despite considerable variation in thermal tolerance among Florida’s elkhorn corals, hostingDurusdiniumappears to be the most effective mechanism for surviving such extreme heat stress. These findings suggest that restoration strategies that focus on rearing sexually derivedA. palmatarecruits withDurusdinium, followed by outplanting to suitable environments, may improve survival during future heatwaves. Combined with efforts to introduce additional elkhorn diversity from populations outside Florida, these approaches may be the most effective interventions to promote the continued survival of Florida’s elkhorn corals in the face of rapid climate change. 

We test a newly developed instrument prototype which utilizes time-resolved chlorophyll- a fluorescence techniques and fluctuating light to characterize Symbiodiniaceae functional traits across seven different coral species under cultivation as part of ongoing restoration efforts in the Florida Keys. While traditional chlorophyll- a fluorescence techniques only provide a handful of algal biometrics, the system and protocol we have developed generates > 1000 dynamic measurements in a short (~11 min) time frame. Resulting ‘high-content’ algal biometric data revealed distinct phenotypes, which broadly corresponded to genus-level Symbiodiniaceae designations determined using quantitative PCR. Next, algal biometric data from Acropora cervicornis (10 genotypes) and A. palmata (5 genotypes) coral fragments was correlated with bleaching response metrics collected after a two month-long exposure to high temperature. A network analysis identified 1973 correlations (Spearman R > 0.5) between algal biometrics and various bleaching response metrics. These identified biomarkers of thermal stress were then utilized to train a predictive model, and when tested against the same A. cervicornis and A. palmata coral fragments, yielded high correlation (R = 0.92) with measured thermal response (reductions in absorbance by chlorophyll-a). When applied to all seven coral species, the model ranked fragments dominated by Cladocopium or Breviolum symbionts as more bleaching susceptible than corals harboring thermally tolerant symbionts ( Durusdinium ). While direct testing of bleaching predictions on novel genotypes is still needed, our device and modeling pipeline may help broaden the scalability of existing approaches for determining thermal tolerance in reef corals. Our instrument prototype and analytical pipeline aligns with recent coral restoration assessments that call for the development of novel tools for improving scalability of coral restoration programs.