HIMB) are using selective breeding in corals to speed up natural evolutionary processes and better understand if heat tolerant coral colonies produce offspring better suited to dealing with climate change.
Researchers will identify thermally tolerant corals in the field, breed them in the lab and expose them to anticipated future climate conditions to see how they cope with the increasingly stressful environments they will face. The most resilient corals will then be out-planted and the results of this selective breeding process will be monitored in the field.
Bleached corals lose the algal symbionts living within their cells and can die if they do not recover quickly enough. This process is becoming increasingly frequent and severe, challenging ecosystems everywhere to keep up.