Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Not great news for coral

New study sheds light on corals' susceptibility to temperature change | e! Science News

It's about coral and their symbiotic algae (the loss of which causes bleaching), and here's the bottom line:
"The differential mortality that we witnessed suggests that the relationship between certain populations of Pocillopora and the species of algae they associate with is quite stable," said Warner. "And this stability, ultimately, is an Achilles heel for Pocillopora. The inability of the corals to shuffle their symbionts or to establish symbioses with different species of algae means that we may see a significant loss of coral populations in the future, especially if extreme temperature disturbances, such as the cold anomaly we documented in 2008 or the hot anomaly that took place in 1997, become more frequent or severe."

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