# Advancing reef recovery through insights into coral nutrition

## TL;DR

The paper introduces a new framework linking coral nutritional needs with environmental nutrients to improve reef resilience and restoration.

## Contribution

The novel contribution is a nutritional ecology framework for corals that integrates physiological requirements with environmental data.

## Key findings

- A nutritional ecology framework can identify mismatches between coral nutritional needs and environmental availability.
- This framework supports improved coral restoration practices and potential interventions like nutrient supplementation.
- It emphasizes the importance of nutrient balance, quality, acquisition, and allocation for coral performance under stress.

## Abstract

Coral reefs support immense biodiversity and human well-being, yet accelerating environmental change demands new strategies to strengthen reef resilience. Across ecological systems, balancing nutritional supply with organismal demand is fundamental to performance and persistence, but this principle has been rarely applied to corals. We propose a nutritional ecology framework that links coral physiological requirements with environmental nutrient supply and quality. By systematically addressing critical knowledge gaps of coral physiological requirements – including nutrient balance, quality, acquisition, and allocation – and integrating these with environmental nutrient data, a nutritional ecology framework can identify mismatches between nutritional requirements and availability that impact coral performance under stress. These insights provide a foundation for advancing restoration practices, from site selection to propagation effectiveness, while opening opportunities for interventions such as targeted nutrient supplementation or microbiome-based nutrient enhancement.

Natural sciences; Environmental science; Nature conservation; Biological sciences