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.
Paul G. Allen Family Foundation grants $7.2 million to support researchers working to help coral reefs survive the impacts of climate change. New Research Seeks to Crack the Code of Coral Reef Heat Resilience | EFE Comunica | Agencia EFE
New Research Seeks to Crack the Code of Coral Reef Heat Resilience | Comunicados | Edición América efe.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from efe.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Corals that withstood a severe bleaching event and were transplanted to a different reef maintained their resilient qualities, according to a new study led by Katie Barott of the University of Pennsylvania.
Credit: Courtesy of Ty Roach (HIMB)
Coral reefs are beautiful and diverse ecosystems that power the economies of many coastal communities. They re also facing threats that are driving their decline, including the planet s warming waters.
This threat hit extreme levels in 2015, when high temperatures were turning corals white around the globe. Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii was hit hard; nearly half of its corals bleached.
Hidden in the aftermath of this extreme event, however, were biochemical clues as to why some corals bleached while others were resistant, information that could help reefs better weather warming waters in the future. These clues have now been uncovered by researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.