"Coral Bleaching" 7 posts Sort by created date Sort by defined ordering View as a grid View as a list
Zoom into a coral reef and discover photosynthetic algae inside the coral’s cells. Reef-building corals rely on these symbionts for their survival.
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Gabriela Hamerlinck onto Coral Bleaching @ 10:19 am on 26 Feb 2016
Coral reefs, how they are threatened by climate change, and how to protect them.
To test whether corals can become more resistant to bleaching, Dr. Steve Palumbi and colleagues performed a series of experiments in the U.S. National Park of American Samoa off of Ofu Island. This BioInteractive activity includes a student worksheet and educator instructions.
All data files from Barshis et al. 2014
All data files from Tepolt and Palumbi 2015.
Gabriela Hamerlinck onto Coral Bleaching @ 10:18 am on 26 Feb 2016
All data files from Seneca and Palumbi 2015.
Abstract: Reef corals are highly sensitive to heat, yet populations resistant to climate change have recently been identified. To determine the mechanisms of temperature tolerance, we reciprocally transplanted corals between reef sites experiencing distinct temperature regimes and tested subsequent physiological and gene expression profiles. Local acclimatization and fixed effects, such as adaptation, contributed about equally to heat tolerance and are reflected in patterns of gene expression. In less than 2 years, acclimatization achieves the same heat tolerance that we would expect from strong natural selection over many generations for these long-lived organisms. Our results show both short-term acclimatory and longer-term adaptive acquisition of climate resistance. Adding these adaptive abilities to ecosystem models is likely to slow predictions of demise for coral reef ecosystems.
