Maternal effects have been well documented for offspring morphology and life history traits in plants and terrestrial animals, yet little is known about maternal effects in corals. Further, few studies have explored maternal effects in gene expression. In a previous study, F1 interspecific hybrid and purebred larvae of the coral species Acropora tenuis and Acropora loripes were settled and exposed to ambient or elevated temperature and pCO₂ conditions for 7 months. At this stage, the hybrid coral recruits from both ocean conditions exhibited strong maternal effects in several fitness traits. We conducted RNA‐sequencing on these corals and showed that gene expression of the hybrid Acropora also exhibited clear maternal effects. Only 40 genes were differentially expressed between hybrids and their maternal progenitor. In contrast, ~2000 differentially expressed genes were observed between hybrids and their paternal progenitors, and between the reciprocal F1 hybrids. These results indicate that maternal effects in coral gene expression can be long‐lasting. Unlike findings from most short‐term stress experiments in corals, no genes were differentially expressed in the hybrid nor purebred offspring after seven months of exposure to elevated temperature and pCO₂ conditions.

中文翻译：

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母本对种间珊瑚杂种基因表达的影响

对植物和陆生动物的后代形态和生活史特征的产妇效应已有充分文献记载，但对珊瑚的产妇效应知之甚少。此外，很少有研究探索基因表达对母亲的影响。在先前的研究中，将珊瑚物种Acropora tenuis和Acropora loripes的F1种间杂种和纯种幼虫定居并暴露于环境温度或高温和p CO ₂条件下7个月。在此阶段，来自两种海洋条件的杂种珊瑚新兵在几种适应性状上均表现出强烈的母体效应。我们对这些珊瑚进行了RNA测序，结果表明杂种Acropora的基因表达还表现出明显的母体作用。杂种与其母体祖先之间仅差异表达了40个基因。相反，在杂种及其父代祖先之间，以及倒数F1杂种之间，观察到约2000个差异表达的基因。这些结果表明，母亲对珊瑚基因表达的影响可能是持久的。与大多数短期珊瑚压力试验的结果不同，在高温和p CO ₂条件下暴露七个月后，杂种或纯种后代中没有基因差异表达。