上个月，许多人现在与现在参与珊瑚的大规模产卵，尤其是在大堡礁上。大多数人集中精力Acroporaspecies, being the most affected by coral bleaching, which has made headlines in the past couple years.
澳大利亚超级珊瑚, through its managing director Nic Dos Santos, decided to be proactive and lead this industry in the right direction. Few years ago, they decided to create a research department (UCA Research) in their own facility and started studying sexual reproduction of the most valuable species for our industry, where almost no biological data are available.
UCA研究是由海洋生物学家（UCA工作人员，实习生，学生志愿者）组成的，在Ciemon Caballes博士的监督下，他还是詹姆斯·库克大学（James Cook University）ARC Coral Reef研究卓越卓越研究中心的兼职研究员。
Few weeks ago, just before the October full moon, they secured some matureMicromussa lordhowensis，这是Queesland中部备受追捧的珊瑚种类最多的单个物种。繁殖的殖民地在产卵系统中得到了适应。
The Micro Lord is a broadcast spawner, releasing bundles of eggs and sperm. The spawning happened 8 days after the October full moon, 3 hours after sunset. Huge, positively buoyant gamete bundles were collected and cross-fertilized. Larvae were given coralline algae encrusted plugs and other substrates in their larval rearing system to settle on, and quite a few of them were successful.
考虑到这些珊瑚能够产生的数百万个幼虫，他们达到了超过50％的定居率，相对较高，并且比海洋中所取得的成就要高得多，估计仅约为3％。受精后通常需要长达10天的幼虫来定居并变成珊瑚息肉。一旦幼虫定居，它们就被放置在一个具有许多成熟菌落的系统中，以便他们可以获取Zooxanthellae Symbionts并加速其生长。
澳大利亚超级珊瑚is currently studying the settlement preferences of this species, and will publish their results in the near future. It will take a few years before these become available for sale, but they demonstrated that sexual reproduction of corals, even LPS, has the potential to be an economically viable alternative for the industry.
It’s a very good step forward taken by our industry and hopefully we can see a significant market shift towards sexually propagated corals in the future. Congratulations to Ultra Coral Australia in leading the way to the future of our industry and we wish them more success with more species of corals in the future.
