ABSTRACT Studies of broadcast spawning in corals are fundamental to our understanding of early life history characteristics, reproductive biology, restoration etc. Spawning of corals for research is routinely conducted, but this is mostly restricted to sites adjacent to reefs and from broodstock collected from the wild just prior to gamete release. Only recently has it been possible to induce predictable broadcast spawning in an ex situ environment, and nobody has successfully closed the life cycle (i.e., production of an F2 generation) of these corals. Here, for the first time, we closed the life cycle of the broadcast spawning coral Acropora millepora in a fully closed ex situ mesocosm. This breakthrough has numerous implications for our understanding of reproductive biology, specifically it offers potential to deepen our understanding of the genetic influence on adaptive traits such as heat tolerance, growth and disease resistance over multiple generations.

中文翻译：

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在封闭的中宇宙完成广播产卵珊瑚的生命周期

摘要 珊瑚广播产卵研究是我们了解早期生活史特征、生殖生物学、恢复等的基础。用于研究的珊瑚产卵是常规进行的，但这主要限于靠近珊瑚礁的地点和从野外收集的亲鱼就在配子释放之前。直到最近才有可能在异地环境中诱导可预测的广播产卵，并且没有人成功地结束这些珊瑚的生命周期（即 F2 代的生产）。在这里，我们第一次在完全封闭的异地中观环境中关闭了广播产卵珊瑚 Acropora millepora 的生命周期。这一突破对我们对生殖生物学的理解有很多影响，