David A. Paz-García

Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste | CIBNOR · Department of Fisheries Ecology

Pocillopora corals, the dominant reef-builders in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, exhibit a high level of phenotypic plasticity, making the interpretation of morphological variation and the identification of species challenging. To test the hypothesis that different coral morphospecies represent phenotypes that develop in different flow conditions, w...

Long-distance dispersal is believed to strongly infuence coral reef population dynamics across the Tropical Pacifc. However, the spatial scale and strength at which populations are potentially connected by dispersal remains uncertain. To determine the patterns in connectivity between the Eastern (ETP) and Central Tropical Pacifc (CTP) ecoregions, w...

Coral reefs world‐wide are threatened by thermal stress caused by climate change. Especially devastating periods of coral loss frequently occur during El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events originating in the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP). El Niño‐induced thermal stress is considered the primary threat to ETP coral reefs. An increase in the fr...

Identifying how past environmental conditions shaped the evolution of corals and their skeletal traits provides a framework for predicting their persistence and that of their non-calcifying relatives under impending global warming and ocean acidification. Here we show that ocean geochemistry, particularly aragonite–calcite seas, drives patterns of...

Anthozoan cnidarians (corals and sea anemones) include some of the world's most important foundation species, capable of building massive reef complexes that support entire ecosystems. Although previous molecular phylogenetic analyses have revealed widespread homoplasy of the morphological characters traditionally used to define orders and families...

Genetic differentiation within species can be influenced by the distance between populations (isolation by distance, IBD) or by differences in the habitats they occupy (isolation by environment, IBE). Understanding the population structure and dynamics that influence genetic diversity within small (<100 km ² ) multi-use marine protected areas (MPAs...

Aim The poleward range expansion of tropical species, and range contraction of temperate species (known as tropicalisation) has mainly been studied from an ecological perspective, with little research on its genetic consequences. Here, we used distributional and genetic data to document the consequences of tropicalisation in rocky shore gastropods...

Aim The biogeography of predator‐induced defences is an understudied area of predator–prey dynamics. Range overlap with predators that induce the response and local demographics (e.g., prey abundances) are likely to be important factors for determining the biogeographic distribution of induced defences within species. However, with climate warming,...

The flexibility to associate with more than one symbiont may considerably expand a host's niche breadth. Coral animals and dinoflagellate micro-algae represent one of the most functionally integrated and widespread mutualisms between two eukaryotic partners. Symbiont identity greatly affects a coral's ability to cope with extremes in temperature an...

Tropical coral reefs are among the most affected ecosystems by climate change and face increasing loss in the coming decades. Effective conservation strategies that maximize ecosystem resilience must be informed by the accurate characterization of extant genetic diversity and population structure together with an understanding of the adaptive poten...

Telomeres are environment-sensitive regulators of health and aging. Here,we present telomere DNA length analysis of two reef-building coral genera revealing that the long- and short-term water thermal regime is a key driver of between-colony variation across the Pacific Ocean. Notably, there are differences between the two studied genera. The telom...

Heat waves are causing declines in coral reefs globally. Coral thermal responses depend on multiple, interacting drivers, such as past thermal exposure, endosymbiont community composition, and host genotype. This makes the understanding of their relative roles in adaptive and/or plastic responses crucial for anticipating impacts of future warming....

Coral reefs are among the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. They support high biodiversity of multicellular organisms that strongly rely on associated microorganisms for health and nutrition. However, the extent of the coral reef microbiome diversity and its distribution at the oceanic basin-scale remains to be explored. Here, we systematically sam...

Health and resilience of the coral holobiont depend on diverse bacterial communities often dominated by key marine symbionts of the Endozoicomonadaceae family. The factors controlling their distribution and their functional diversity remain, however, poorly known. Here, we study the ecology of Endozoicomonadaceae at an ocean basin-scale by sampling...

The Tara Pacific expedition (2016–2018) sampled coral ecosystems around 32 islands in the Pacific Ocean and the ocean surface waters at 249 locations, resulting in the collection of nearly 58 000 samples. The expedition was designed to systematically study warm-water coral reefs and included the collection of corals, fish, plankton, and seawater sa...

Coral reef science is a fast-growing field propelled by the need to better understand coral health and resilience to devise strategies to slow reef loss resulting from environmental stresses. Key to coral resilience are the symbiotic interactions established within a complex holobiont, i.e. the multipartite assemblages comprising the coral host org...

Differences in selective pressures and the energetic cost of gametes in gonochoristic corals should vary with the sex of the colony, which may lead to sexual dimorphism. Coral colonies are composed of subunits (corallites) that create a complex morphological architecture. If corallite features are distinct between sexes, then the degree of coordina...

Tropical coral reefs are among the worst affected ecosystems by climate change with predictions ranging between a 70-90% loss of reefs in the coming decades. Effective conservation strategies that maximize ecosystem resilience, and potential for recovery, must be informed by the accurate characterization of extant genetic diversity and population s...

In the Anthropocene, coral reefs are in a state of severe degradation as a result of rising temperatures, ocean acidification and eutrophication, and are expected to get worse over the next 100 years. Some coral communities naturally inhabit marginal conditions similar to the climate scenarios predicted for the next century. Such is the case of the...

Coral reef science is a fast-growing field propelled by the need to better understand coral health and resilience to devise strategies to slow reef loss resulting from environmental stresses. Key to coral resilience are the symbiotic interactions established within a complex holobiont, i.e. the multipartite assemblages comprising the host coral org...

The Tara Pacific expedition (2016-2018) sampled coral ecosystems around 32 islands in the Pacific Ocean and the ocean surface waters at 249 locations, resulting in the collection of nearly 58,000 samples. The expedition was designed to systematically study warm coral reefs and included the collection of corals, fish, plankton, and seawater samples...

Sexual selection in gonochoristic corals should vary with the sex of the colony, which may lead to sexual dimorphism. Because coral colonies possess a complex morphological architecture composed of subunits (corallites), the degree of coordinated change among these subunits may be subject to divergent selection between sexes. This study tested for...

Most tropical reef corals live at temperatures near 27°C and pH values near 8. Conditions outside of these can stress corals and lead to bleaching, disease, and death. However, some corals can survive in marginal or extreme habitats outside of these ranges. To date there is a paucity of knowledge about the role that associated microbes may play in...

Anthozoan cnidarians (corals and sea anemones) include some of the world's most important foundation species, capable of building massive reef complexes that support entire ecosystems. Although previous molecular phylogenetic analyses have revealed widespread homoplasy of the morphological characters traditionally used to define orders and families...

Corals of the genus Pocillopora are the dominant component of coral communities. Their distribution in the Mexican Pacific ranges from Loreto, north of Baja California Sur, to La Entrega, south of Oaxaca. As a marginal region, coral communities continuously experience changes in their distribution. Such is the case with the occurrence of thermal an...

Sexual recruitment allows corals to maintain their populations through time, reach new habitats, and repopulate areas after an environmental or anthropogenic disturbance. This study aimed to estimate spatiotemporal variation of sexual recruitment along two areas of the southwestern coast of the Gulf of California (Bahía de La Paz and Bahía de Loret...

In the emerald coral Porites panamensis, the rates of elongation and calcification of colonies are higher in males than in females, probably because of the higher energetic demands of the latter in order to cope with the development of the large planulae produced throughout the year. This differing energetic demand could also be reflected in the se...

The dispersal during the planktonic larval period is a key feature to understand the metapopulation structure of marine fishes, and is commonly described by four general models: 1) lack of population structure due to extensive larval dispersal, 2) isolation by geographic distance where larval connectivity decreases with increasing distance between...

We developed a set of hypervariable microsatellite markers for the Pacific red snapper (Lutjanus peru), an economically important marine fish for small-scale fisheries in the west coast of Mexico. We performed shotgun genome sequencing with the 454 XL titanium chemistry and used bioinformatic tools to search for perfect microsatellite loci. We sele...

Sea urchins play a crucial role in the health and dynamics of reef ecosystems. Diadema mexicanum is a dominant grazer and erosive agent of the substratum in reef environments in the eastern tropical Pacific. Its reported distribution extends from the middle of the Gulf of California (26° N) to northern Peru (6°23′ S), including oceanic islands. Her...

The study of complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) revealed different gene rearrangements, highly variable markers, and delineated clades that have aided the understanding of the evolutionary history in corals. In this study, we examined mitogenomic variation of reef-building Porites corals and designed 34 primer pairs to target high diversi...

Rising seawater surface temperatures worldwide may cause reef coral species to shift their geographical range towards cooler environments. Information on such shifts, however, remains scarce. The scleractinian coral Porites sverdrupi (Durham, 1947) is endemic to the Gulf of Califor-nia, and is considered a threatened species due to its vulnerabilit...

: Pocillopora corals are the q1 main reef builders in the eastern tropical Pacific. The validity of Pocillopora morphospecies remains under debate because of disagreements between morphological and genetic data. To evaluate the temporal stability of morphospecies in situ, we monitored the shapes of individual colonies in three communities in the so...

Abstract The mitogenome of the endemic coral Porites panamensis (Genbank accession number KJ546638) has a total length of 18,628 bp, and the arrangement consist of 13 protein-coding genes, 2 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes and 2 transfer RNA (tRNA) genes. Gene order was equal to other scleractinian coral mitogenomes.

This study addressed the relative contribution of sexual and asexual reproduction to the genetic composition of populations of two scleractinian corals, Pocillopora damicornis and Porites panamensis, off the west coast of mainland Mexico. Reproductive indexes showed that P. damicornis reproduced both sexually and asexually; P. panamensis reproduced...

This study addressed the relative contribution of sexual and asexual reproduction to the genetic composition of populations of two scleractinian corals, Pocillopora damicornis and Porites panamensis, off the west coast of mainland Mexico. Reproductive indexes showed that P. damicornis reproduced both sexually and asexually; P. panamensis reproduced...

The coral fauna of the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP) is depauperate and peripheral; hence, it has drawn attention to the factors allowing its survival. Here, we use a genetic seascape approach and ecological niche modeling to unravel the environmental factors correlating with the genetic variation of Porites panamensis, a hermatypic coral endemic...

Density banding provides a record of performance of coral colonies over time and across environments, and offers 3 measurable variables: skeletal density, extension rate, and calcification rate. Skeleton formation is energetically expensive for corals and may be associated with other energy-dependent processes, such as reproduction. Egg production...

High predation by the corallivore gastropod Jenneria pustulata was observed in July 2011 in a high-latitude reef at Bahía de Los Ángeles in the northern Gulf of California. Porites panamensis corals were infested by 15 to 40 sea snails per colony (22 ± 7.25 ind 0.1 m–2 of Porites surface). Coral colonies were 20–30 cm tall and the average size of t...

Genetic connectivity was studied in two scleractinian corals, Pocillopora damicornis (branching and broadcast spawner) and Pontes panamensis (massive and brooding type), along the Pacific coast of Mexico. Allelic diversity between adults and juveniles, the latter recruited after the El Niño—Southern Oscillation (ENSO) 1997–1998 event, was determine...

Cnidarian-algal symbioses are important in sustaining coral reef ecosystems. Little is known about how these associations respond ecologically and evolutionarily to environmental change. We examined the diversity of zooxanthellae populations in two morphotypes of Porites panamensis in the southern Gulf of California. Additionally, we analyzed the h...

Genetic variation was analyzed to determine whether two morphotypes, a massive and columnar form, of Porites panamensis found together in the Gulf of California (GC) were genetically differentiated. Levels of genetic variation were similar between morphotypes and no fixed alleles were detected between them. Levels of sexual reproduction were high,...

Genetic structure was studied in the brooding coral Porites panamensis along of the Mexican Pacific (MP). We collected in three locations inside of the Gulf of California, two zones at the entrance of the Gulf, and one location at south of MP. Exclusive genotypes in two of six allozyme loci were observed in northern (LGG-1 DE and LGG-1 EE) and sout...

Genetic structure was studied in the coral Pocillopora damicornis in three areas of coral development of the Mexican Pacific (MP). Specimens were collected from six localities: El Portugues and Punta Gaviotas located inside the Gulf of California (GC), Punta Arenas and Isla Redonda from the entrance of GC, and Las Dos Hermanas and La Entrega in the...

The regeneration of artificial lesions in the columnar and massive forms of the nominal taxon Porites panamensis was compared, in order to contribute to the knowledge of the physiology of the species complex and to help clarify the taxonomic situation of the phenoms. The study was carried out at Punta Gaviotas (24º17.134' N, 110º19.870' W) and Punt...