Two of the world’s most ubiquitous species of reef-building corals seem surprisingly able to survive and even cope well with climate change, according to a new study
and 2015. In late 2015, to learn more about how both warming and acidification might jeopardize reefs in the future, McLachlan and her colleagues visited four reefs in diverse settings around Oahu. Using a hammer and chisel, they collected samples of three common coral species: rice coral, finger coral, and lobe coral.
The tanks that tested both warming and ocean acidification together were the most realistic simulations of the future, says Andréa Grottoli, a coral biogeochemist at Ohio State and the senior author on the study. In all the tanks, she and her colleagues monitored a suite of physiological indicators to see how the corals were responding over time to their environment—and the results were heartening.
“They weren’t just struggling. Two of the three species were doing really well,” says Grottoli. And her team may have underestimated the resilience of the third species, rice corals, she says. Rice corals are nourished not just by their symbiotic algae but by eating zooplankton, and in the experiments they were fed less zooplankton than they might normally get in the wild.
“Although it is hopeful that some species will survive this century, unless drastic reductions in emissions occur, corals will eventually lose their fight for survival,” Rodgers says. Current policies to reduce emissions have the world on track to warm by about 2.7°C by the end of the century, according to theWhile many of the experiment's coral survived, extreme heat is still pushing reefs to their limits.
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