Author contributions

E.M. and R.D.G conceived and coordinated the project, E.M. and F.C.C. collected samples from the wild, ran the preconditioning experiment, and assessed the bleaching rate in corals. E.M extracted RNA and analyzed gene expression, performed Caspase-3 activity experiments and statistically analyzed the data. E.M. wrote the manuscript. E.M. and F.C.C. read and approved the manuscript.