Can a thermally tolerant symbiont improve the future of C aribbean coral reefs?

The detrimental effect of climate change induced bleaching on C aribbean coral reefs has been widely documented in recent decades. Several studies have suggested that increases in the abundance of thermally tolerant endosymbionts may ameliorate the effect of climate change on reefs. Symbionts that confer tolerance to temperature also reduce the growth rate of their coral host. Here, we show, using a spatial ecosystem model, that an increment in the abundance of a thermally tolerant endosymbiont (D1a) is unlikely to ensure the persistence of C aribbean reefs, or to reduce their rate of decline, due to the concomitant reduction in growth rate under current thermal stress predictive scenarios. Furthermore, our results suggest that given the documented vital rates of D1a‐dominated corals, increasing dominance of D1a in coral hosts may have a detrimental effect by reducing the resilience of C aribbean reefs, and preventing their long‐term recovery. This is because C aribbean ecosystems appear to be highly sensitive to changes in the somatic growth rate of corals. Alternative outcomes might be expected in systems with different community‐level dynamics such as reefs in the I ndo‐ P acific, where the ecological costs of reduced growth rate might be far smaller.