SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A phenomenon that makes coral spawn more than once a year is improving the resilience of the Great Barrier Reef.
The discovery was made by University of Queensland and CSIRO researchers investigating whether corals that split their spawning over multiple months are more successful at spreading their offspring across different reefs.
Dr. Karlo Hock, from UQ's School of Biological Sciences, said coral mass spawning events are one of the most spectacular events in the oceans.
"They're incredibly beautiful," Dr. Hock said.
"On Australia's Great Barrier Reef, all coral colonies typically spawn only once per year, over several nights after the full moon, as the water warms up in late spring."
Study co-author Dr. Christopher Doropoulos from the CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere said sometimes however, coral split their spawning over two successive months.
"This helps them synchronise their reproduction to the best environmental conditions and moon phases," he said.
"While reproductive success during split spawning may be lower than usual because it can lead to reduced fertilisation, we found that the release of eggs in two separate smaller events gives the corals a second and improved chance of finding a new home reef."
Split spawning increases robustness of coral larval supply and inter-reef connectivity, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11367-7)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 07 2019, @12:04PM (1 child)
Wtf? This isn't a new species discovered in a extraterrestrial crash in antarctica. It is the same species of coral spawning twice instead of once in a year, something known to happen occasionally.
When a person who usually sleeps only at night takes a nap one day you probably start freaking out about it, taking it as a sign of the end of the world. Holy shitz if this strange and disturbing trend continues soon everyone on the planet will be sleeping 24 hrs per day! We must raise taxes or this nasty problem will get worse!
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Freeman on Wednesday August 07 2019, @03:59PM
Soo..., what you're saying is, if I sleep more I'll become an alien like Superman? Seems like this needs to be tested. I'm sure, 40 years of siestas will be enough testing.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"