[Census of heat tolerance among Florida's threatened staghorn corals] - Census of heat tolerance among Florida's threatened staghorn corals from a study of Acropora cervicornis conducted from August to October 2020 (Collaborative Research: Investigating the genomic basis of key performance traits to quantify the evolutionary potential of coral populations under climate change)

Many of these interventions target naturally heat-tolerant individuals to boost climate resilience, but the challenges of quickly and reliably quantifying heat tolerance and identifying thermotolerant individuals have hampered implementation.

Here, we used coral bleaching automated stress systems to perform rapid, standardized heat tolerance assays on 229 colonies of Acropora cervicornis across six coral nurseries spanning Florida's Coral Reef, USA. Analysis of heat stress dose–response curves for each colony revealed a broad range in thermal tolerance among individuals (approx. 2.5°C range in Fv/Fm ED50), with highly reproducible rankings across independent tests (r = 0.76).