{"doi":"10.1111/mec.17246","title":"Phenotypic plasticity for improved light harvesting, in tandem with methylome repatterning in reef‐building corals","abstract":"Acclimatization through phenotypic plasticity represents a more rapid response to environmental change than adaptation and is vital to optimize organisms' performance in different conditions. Generally, animals are less phenotypically plastic than plants, but reef-building corals exhibit plant-like properties. They are light dependent with a sessile and modular construction that facilitates rapid morphological changes within their lifetime. We induced phenotypic changes by altering light exposure in a reciprocal transplant experiment and found that coral plasticity is a colony trait emerging from comprehensive morphological and physiological changes within the colony. Plasticity in skeletal features optimized coral light harvesting and utilization and paralleled significant methylome and transcriptome modifications. Network-associated responses resulted in the identification of hub genes and clusters associated to the change in phenotype: inter-partner recognition and phagocytosis, soft tissue growth and biomineralization. Furthermore, we identified hub genes putatively involved in animal photoreception-phototransduction. These findings fundamentally advance our understanding of how reef-building corals repattern the methylome and adjust a phenotype, revealing an important role of light sensing by the coral animal to optimize photosynthetic performance of the symbionts.","journal":"Molecular Ecology","year":2023,"id":329357,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":20,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9477,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":299230,"name":"Robersy Sánchez","orcid":"0000-0002-5246-1453","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1052046,"name":"M. Isabel Martinez-Rugerio","orcid":"0000-0001-9860-1207","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":299228,"name":"Xiaodong Yang","orcid":"0000-0002-4971-2362","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":303603,"name":"Tom A. Maher","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1052047,"name":"C. Cornelia Osborne","orcid":"0000-0001-6759-4542","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1052048,"name":"Susana Enríquez","orcid":"0000-0001-5776-902X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":752028,"name":"Iliana B. Baums","orcid":"0000-0001-6463-7308","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":299233,"name":"Sally A. Mackenzie","orcid":"0000-0003-2077-5607","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1052521,"name":"Roberto Iglesias‐Prieto","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1052045,"name":"Kelly Gómez-Campo","orcid":"0000-0003-4560-111X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":84,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:09:01.509601Z","pmid":"38153177","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}