Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) is a new disease first discovered off the coast of Miami in 2013 and has rapidly spread south to the Florida Keys and subsequently to the Caribbean Sea. This disease leads to an extremely high mortality rate among some stony coral species, and its primary cause is still unknown. Although there currently isn’t a cure for SCTLD, Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium has developed a topical treatment that limits the progression and transmission of the disease. In this study, we constructed a node-based transmission model to optimize the amount of treatment used to mitigate the number of cases of SCTLD. Our model is built on data supplied from previous Mote research. A node-based transmission model is like an agent-based model, which keeps track of an individual specimen’s state, allowing for heterogeneity and tracking an individual’s disease progression. The model connects all coral that are within one meter of each other, and every node had its disease state as “susceptible” or healthy, “infected”, or “treated”. Neighboring susceptible coral to an infected coral had a chance of being infected each time step. Infected coral was treated by choosing the infected coral with the most susceptible neighbors, and then treating the coral with the highest number of connections. The research and data produced by our study will help inform and potentially optimize treatment of coral specimens in the Florida Keys and help mitigate the spread of SCTLD until a cure prevention method can be developed. 

For more information: lsdudney@eckerd.edu