Coral Reefs Show Resilience to Rising Temperatures:
Rising ocean temperatures have devastated coral reefs all over the world, but a recent study in Global Change Biology has found that reefs in the Eastern Tropical Pacific [ETP] region may prove to be an exception. The findings, which suggest that reefs in this area may have adapted to heat stress, could provide insights about the potential for survival of reefs in other parts of the world. The study was published in print in July.
"Our 44-year study shows that the amount of living coral has not changed in the ETP," said James W. Porter, the paper's senior author. "Live coral cover has gone up and down in response to El Niño-induced bleaching, but unlike reefs elsewhere in the Caribbean and Indo Pacific, reefs in the ETP almost always bounce back," he said.
[...] They hypothesized that several key factors allowed the ETP reefs to bounce back.
First, corals in this area are mostly pocilloporids, a type of coral that reproduces at high rates. They also contain species of symbiotic algae that are particularly tolerant to extreme temperatures.
Patterns of weather and geography in the ETP may also play a role. Areas having heavier cloud cover or upwelling of cooler waters may survive locally and be able to reseed more severely affected reefs elsewhere.
Another important factor may be "ecological memory," meaning that ETP corals may have become conditioned to heat stress over the years, through mechanisms such as genetic adaptation and epigenetic inheritance, whereby parents pass on these survival traits to their offspring.
Journal Reference:
Mauricio Romero‐Torres, Alberto Acosta, Ana M. Palacio‐Castro, et al. Coral reef resilience to thermal stress in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, Global Change Biology (DOI: 10.1111/gcb.15126)
Encouraging news, but will coral reefs in other regions eventually follow suit?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2020, @07:42AM
The Great Barrier Reef is 20,000 years old. That's a blink in geologic time. If AGW is real, it's just a blip for these things. They've been through a lot before, they'll go through a lot again.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday July 26 2020, @09:32AM (3 children)
Because
Let's just avoid misguided references to the Great Barrier Reef (in the west Pacific).
Unless, of course, you really like click-baity headlines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2020, @10:10AM (2 children)
also known as small part of the Indo Pacific region
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pacific [wikipedia.org]
which is different place from the Tropical Eastern Pacific
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Eastern_Pacific [wikipedia.org]
There are great many more reefs in the Indo-Pacific region than just the Great Barrier Reef. It's like having article about Native Americans in the Americas regions and then someone saying "this is about USA!" which would completely ignore most of the Native Americans.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday July 26 2020, @10:32AM (1 child)
The fact that the Great Barrier Reef is in Indo-Pacific and is vulnerable to AGW:
1. is an example of possible confusion [soylentnews.org]
2. contradicts the "Coral Reefs Show Resilience to Rising Temperatures" title - at least some coral reefs do not show today resilience to raising temperatures
3. actually, most of the coral reefs are sensible to raising temperatures, the ones in Tropical Eastern Pacific are the exception
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2020, @01:12PM
So you are arguing that the title is not preceded by "Some"?
As for your #1, that's a troll or someone that thinks the Great Barrier Reef is the only reef. Like Grand Canyon is not the only canyon in the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2020, @03:15PM
They can eat coral instead of bland Alger https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-21/crown-of-thorns-starfish-are-more-resilient-than-thought/12472656 [abc.net.au]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 26 2020, @05:15PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene-Eocene_Thermal_Maximum [wikipedia.org]
What is happening now, is nothing in comparison.
Some maladapted species may get replaced by hardier ones, and the reefs will continue just as in all those hundreds millions of years before.