Some corals might be able to adapt to climate change

According to a study, some corals species can adapt to climate change better than others and it is also likely that they will be able to pass their DNA to their upcoming generations. The researchers in Australia, cross-bred the samples of a type of branching coral, known as the Corpora Millepora from two different location which were about 500 km or 300 miles apart. Some were taken from Princess Charlotte Bay, which is a warmer area of the Great Barrier Reef and the other was Orpheus Island about five degrees of latitude to the south where the water was about 2 degrees cooler.

After crossing the two, the researchers found that the corals that were taken from warmer water and whose parent corals belonged to warmer waters were more likely to survive the climate change. The ones who were the natives of cooler waters had some sort of natural resilience in the DNA.

The co-author of the study, Mikhail Matz, an associate professor of integrative biology at The University of Texas at Austin said,” Our research found that corals do not have to wait for new mutations to appear. Averting coral extinction may start with something as simple as an exchange of coral immigrants to spread already existing genetic variants.”

The Coral reefs are getting destroyed at a very fast rate in many parts of the world due to pollution and climate change. They are unable to adapt to changing conditions and hence end up dying. Warming seas, diseases etc. are also prime reasons for their vanishing. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration has been discussing what the bleaching of coral throughout the world means. It has already issued a warning that the world is on the brink of a full-fledged international bleaching occasion.

Coral reefs are quite useful and important to humans, which is why there is a rising concern over their survival. They provide shelter and protection for many types of fishes. A lot of species might become homeless and won’t have a place to breed if there were no corals reefs. The corals also regulate the amount of carbon dioxide in the ocean water.