Preliminary studies of sperm cryopreservation in the mushroom coral, Fungia scutaria

Abstract

Coral species throughout the world are facing severe environmental pressures. Because of this, we began cryobiological studies on the sperm of the mushroom coral, Fungia scutaria. We determined that F. scutaria sperm had a mean length of 56 μm and head diameter of 2.5 μm, and a mean spontaneous ice nucleation temperature of −37.2 ± 1.7 °C. When the sperm were exposed to the cryoprotectant glycerol for 5 or 20 min (at 10% v/v), no fertilized larvae were produced. However, when sperm were exposed for 20 min to propylene glycol (10% v/v), fertilizations were produced at the same rate as untreated control eggs and sperm ( P > 0.05), but slightly less for dimethyl sulfoxide (10% v/v) ( P < 0.05). Regardless, dimethyl sulfoxide caused less osmotic damage to the sperm membrane than did propylene glycol. Therefore, we used the dimethyl sulfoxide (10% v/v) to develop cryopreservation protocols that yielded good post-thaw morphology and motility (>95%) for coral sperm.