2026-10-10T19:11:50Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/34001145 2026-09-25T20:09:46Z category_24232 category_24226 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Data For Renfro-Price et al Bleaching and Resilience in Coral Reef Sponges During the Fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event Bobbie Renfro-Price (25111893) Population ecology Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) Coral Reef Porifera Bleaching <p dir="ltr">Coral reef ecosystems worldwide have now experienced the Fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event (GCBE4). Ample data have captured the responses of scleractinian coral species to this hyperthermal stress event, however, far less is known about. The responses of other photosymbiont-bearing reef taxa. Many sponge species (Porifera) are mixotrophic and rely on photosynthetic products from autotrophic symbionts to varying degrees. The potentially facultative nature of sponge-photosymbiont associations, compared with the obligate coral-zooxanthellae symbiosis, may confer greater resilience to bleaching and hyperthermal stress in mixotrophic sponge species. The raw data provided here were collected during a study that surveyed the visible bleaching response of natural populations of one dinoflagellate-harboring sponge species, <i>Cliona varians </i>forma <i>varians</i>, in Bocas del Toro, Panama during GCBE4. This study also quantified non-visible symbiont declines via loss of chlorophyll <i>a</i> from the tissue of cyanobacteria-harboring species, <i>Aplysina cauliformis</i>, in sponges held in an <i>in situ</i> nursery in Florida, USA. Water temperature data provided were sourced from I.CARE (icareaboutcoral.org) and publicly accessible databases (MarineGEO Bocas del Toro Observatory at the Bocas del Toro Research Station, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Panama; Aqualink monitoring network; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Data Buoy Center Station KYWF1 in Key West, Florida). Results showed sub-lethal effects of bleaching in both species. At present these symbiont-bearing sponges, while not resistant to heat stress, do exhibit resilience. However, we caution that longer, more frequent, or more severe future marine heat waves may push the sub-lethal effects of bleaching found in this study over a threshold into physiological damage and mortality that would cause population declines.</p> 2026-09-25T20:09:46Z Dataset Dataset 10.6084/m9.figshare.34001145.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Data_For_Renfro-Price_et_al_Bleaching_and_Resilience_in_Coral_Reef_Sponges_During_the_Fourth_Global_Coral_Bleaching_Event/34001145 CC BY 4.0 Embargoed