Dataset: Temperature and light intensity measured at each transplant site during a reciprocal transplant experiment conducted at three sites in Turneffe Atoll, Belize from February to July 2022

Reciprocal transplant experiment:
In February 2022, 32 colonies (subclone/ramet) of the Caribbean thin finger coral, Porites divaricata (Taxonomy ID: 262287) were identified. 3 to 9 branch fragments were collected from every subclone (colony/ramet). 1 to 3 fragments from each ramet were moved to three designated sites: M1 (mangrove site 1), M2 (mangrove site 2), and R (reef site). 7 to 9 adjacent ropes were deployed at each site (seven ropes at M1 and R, and nine ropes at M2). Following a six-month period (February 2022 - July 2022), two traits were measured for each fragment: length change and red channel intensity, which serves as an inverse indicator of chlorophyll pigment density (Winters, Holzman, Blekhman, Beer, & Loya, 2009).

Environmental Measurements:
Four Onset HOBO Pendant data loggers (Onset Corporation, Bourne, MA) were deployed at the time of transplant to record both temperature (°C) and light intensity (lux) every two hours and remained there over the duration of the experiment. Lux was converted to photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD: micromoles per square meter per second (µmol m-2 s-1)) with a standard sunlight conversion factor of 0.018.

See 'Related Datasets' for the coral trait variation data.