Study shows a way for corals to survive
Posted on: 26/Jun/2015 8:50:15 PM
A new study has shown that corals are not as delicate as thought before. Corals are have been endangered due to warmer seas, storms and pollution. However, the study, which was conducted by Australian scientists, now shows that when two species of corals are cross bred, the corals whose parents came from warmer waters were 10 times more likely to survive than those whose parents came from cooler climate.
According to an Associate Professor of Marine Biology from the University of Miami, ‘What this paper shows is there might be an actual value to doing that and we should start doing pilot studies to investigate... What is exciting about this study is it is the first time people have actually cross bred corals from different thermal regimes -- in this case different latitudes -- and then looked at the heritability of thermal tolerance which is obviously a big question in terms of figuring out whether and how corals are going to adapt to climate change in the coming century or so... It allows us to not just sort if sit back and wait to see what happens... If you know or have an idea of how the oceans are going to warm in a certain area you might consider taking a locally warm-adapted corals from area into another area that is slightly cooler but that is expected to warm.’
