Artificial Intelligence as a Tool to Study the 3D Skeletal Architecture in Newly Settled Coral Recruits: Insights into the Effects of Ocean Acidification on Coral Biomineralization

The role and risks of selective adaptation in extreme coral habitats

The alarming rate of climate change demands new management strategies to protect coral reefs. Environments such as mangrove lagoons, characterized by extreme variations in multiple abiotic factors, are viewed as potential sources of stress-tolerant corals for strategies such as assisted evolution and coral propagation. However, biological trade-offs for adaptation to such extremes are poorly known. Here, we investigate the reef-building coral Porites lutea thriving in both mangrove and reef sites and show that stress-tolerance comes with compromises in genetic and energetic mechanisms and skeletal characteristics. We observe reduced genetic diversity and gene expression variability in mangrove corals, a disadvantage under future harsher selective pressure. We find reduced density, thickness and higher porosity in coral skeletons from mangroves, symptoms of metabolic energy redirection to stress response functions. These findings demonstrate the need for caution when utilizing stress-tolerant corals in human interventions, as current survival in extremes may compromise future competitive fitness.

Computational Design and Manufacturing of Sustainable Materials through First-Principles and Materiomics

Engineered materials are ubiquitous throughout society and are critical to the development of modern technology, yet many current material systems are inexorably tied to widespread deterioration of ecological processes. Next-generation material systems can address goals of environmental sustainability by providing alternatives to fossil fuel-based materials and by reducing destructive extraction processes, energy costs, and accumulation of solid waste. However, development of sustainable materials faces several key challenges including investigation, processing, and architecting of new feedstocks that are often relatively mechanically weak, complex, and difficult to characterize or standardize. In this review paper, we outline a framework for examining sustainability in material systems and discuss how recent developments in modeling, machine learning, and other computational tools can aid the discovery of novel sustainable materials. We consider these through the lens of materiomics, an approach that considers material systems holistically by incorporating perspectives of all relevant scales, beginning with first-principles approaches and extending through the macroscale to consider sustainable material design from the bottom-up. We follow with an examination of how computational methods are currently applied to select examples of sustainable material development, with particular emphasis on bioinspired and biobased materials, and conclude with perspectives on opportunities and open challenges.

The Effect of Ocean Acidification on Skeletal Structures

It is well known that the increasing partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 (pCO2) is reducing surface ocean pH, a process known as ocean acidification (OA) [...]