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Fertile Hybrids Could Aid Coral Adaptation

Created 17/11/2025

Updated 23/01/2026

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Fertile hybrids can enhance the adaptive capacity and resilience of species under stress by increasing genetic diversity within populations, masking the effects of deleterious recessive alleles, and facilitating the introgression of beneficial genetic variants into parental species. However, many hybrids are infertile. We compared the fertility of aquarium-reared F1 hybrid and purebred corals of the species Acropora loripes and Acropora kenti and examined the viability of early life stages of second-generation (F2) hybrid and back-crossed planula larvae and recruits. The F1 hybrids spawned viable gametes and the F2 hybrid and back-crossed embryos developed into planula larvae and settled to become sessile coral recruits. The F1 hybrids had greater reproductive fitness than the F1 A. loripes purebred stock in an aquarium environment based on their probability of spawning and their fertilization success in crosses using their gametes. Interspecific coral hybrids can therefore be fertile and have high reproductive fitness, which could benefit the persistence of threatened coral reefs.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Fertile Hybrids Could Aid Coral Adaptation
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/en/dataset/78920dc0-436f-4053-a47f-5b04805038be
Contact Point
Australian Ocean Data Network
reception@aims.gov.au
Reference Period 15/01/2026
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
{
  "coordinates": [
    146.8168945144862,
    -18.321688289806634
  ],
  "type": "Point"
}
Data Portal data.gov.au

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on data.gov.au "Fertile Hybrids Could Aid Coral Adaptation". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/fertile-hybrids-could-aid-coral-adaptation