Eco-immunology outreach for coral conservation
{"title": "Eco-immunology outreach for coral conservation", "logoImg": "bafkreib3riobgmkki6eg4i23crbcoan4gxi77pvya7s5lxrmmr5oxejxdy", "website": "https://www.instagram.com/inmunidadcoralina", "bannerImg": "bafkreicrmdp6km62dpfnu2j5granw3cvek2zqyitf67rwqjvvtw5rbeiz4", "createdAt": 1742001920021, "credentials": {}, "description": "Hi! I'm Jacqueline Rivera-Ortega, doctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology at the Reef Systems Unit Puerto Morelos, ICMyL, UNAM. My research line is the eco-immunology applied as a tool for coral conservation. With the team, we study the natural variations of the coral mucus immune parameters. \n\n**Our knowledge**\nAmong our results, we found that coral immunity varies depending on the moon cycle, during the day (1) and between seasons. But also, we found that healthy corals in a diseased epizootic show increased immune parameters (2, 3). Therefore, we are proposing coral immunity as a proxy of coral health and this knowledge which sounds very theoretical, could be applied to coral restoration. \n\n**Goals**\nWithin this project, we aimed to:\n1) Spread the knowledge and put it in service to the practitioners and other stakeholders through seminars and workshops of academic and non-academic spaces.\n2) In the next five years, we are going to strengthen the immune parameters baseline of the major building corals in the Mexican Caribbean to have a reliable database that was useful in decision-taking in conservation.\n\n\n**Who we are?**\nOur team is composed of four women in science from different scholar levels. Together we have studied three of the major building corals and two of the most endangered ones in the Mexican Caribbean: *Acropora palmata*, *Montastraea cavernosa* and *Pseudodiploria strigosa*. We also worked with the resistant coral *Porites astreoides* and with other model organisms such as the anemone *Exaiptasia diaphana* and the upside-down jellyfish *Cassiopea xamachana*. \n\n\n**Our collaborations**\n- We have worked together with the MPA Puerto Morelos Reef System National Park. \n- We also contributed to the emergency plan of white syndrome in 2018 with different stakeholders (4). \n- We have an academic network of national and international coral disease researchers and from other knowledge areas. \n\n\n**To know more**\n1: https://www.cienciasmarinas.com.mx/index.php/cmarinas/article/view/3505/420421142\n2: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2018.00392/full\n3: https://peerj.com/articles/10695/\n4: https://www.conanp.gob.mx/cambioclimatico/PlanDeAccionSindromeBlanco.pdf", "logoImgData": {}, "bannerImgData": {}}