Latest Acropora Stories

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral system in the world, so big that it can be seen from space, is one of the planet’s most remarkable natural wonders. But researchers from University of Queensland have now revealed this precious ecosystem is not faring so well. The problem: European settlement and extensive degradation on mainland Australia. The expansion of European settlement in Australia has been contributing...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online It has been found that an unevenness of nutrients in reef waters can increase the bleaching vulnerability of reef corals according to Research from the University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. Numerous polyps jointly forming a layer of living tissue that cover the calcareous skeletons make up the corals. Single-celled algae called zooxanthellae, which live within the coral polyps, is what they...

Corals may be better placed to cope with the gradual acidification of the world’s oceans than previously thought – giving rise to hopes that coral reefs might escape climatic devastation. In new research published in the journal Nature Climate Change, an international scientific team has identified a powerful internal mechanism that could enable some corals and their symbiotic algae to counter the adverse impact of a more acidic ocean. As humans release ever-larger amounts of carbon...

Lessons from tens of millions of years ago are pointing to new ways to save and protect today’s coral reefs and their myriad of beautiful and many-hued fishes at a time of huge change in the Earth’s systems. The complex relationship we see today  between fishes and corals developed relatively recently in geological terms – and is a major factor in shielding reef species from extinction, says Professor David Bellwood of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James...

Recent experiments conducted at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) produced striking results, showing for the first time that corals hosting a single type of “zooxanthellae” can have different levels of thermal tolerance – a feature that was only known previously for corals with a mix of zooxanthellae. Zooxanthellae are algal cells that live within the tissue of living coral and provide the coral host with energy; the relationship is crucial for the coral’s survival....

Australian scientists have thrown new light on the mechanism behind the mass death of corals worldwide as the Earth’s climate warms. Coral bleaching, one of the most devastating events affecting coral reefs around the planet, is triggered by rising water temperatures. It occurs when the corals and their symbiotic algae become heat-stressed, and the algae which feed the corals either die or are expelled by the coral. There have been seven major bleaching events globally in the past 30...

Scientists studying coral reefs in and around the South Pacific have found that some seaweed can cause coral bleaching and suppress photosynthesis by emitting anti-coral chemicals. As part of their study, researchers have identified and mapped the chemical structure of molecules used by certain types of marine seaweed that kill or inhibit growth of reef-building coral. Chemicals found on the surfaces of several species of seaweed have been shown to harm coral, suggesting that competition...

Australian scientists today announced they have sequenced the genome of the staghorn coral Acropora millepora, a major component of the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs worldwide.This is the first animal genome project to be carried out entirely in Australia, and is an important milestone in Australian biotechnology and in the study of coral reefs, said the researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF)."This is a...

The more humanity acidifies and warms the world's oceans with carbon emissions, the harder we will have to work to save our coral reefs.That's the blunt message from a major new study by an international scientific team, which finds that ocean acidification and global warming will combine with local impacts like overfishing and nutrient runoff to weaken the world's coral reefs right when they are struggling to survive.Modeling by a team led by Dr Ken Anthony of the ARC Centre of Excellence...

Finding could help scientists monitor how corals adapt to global warmingYoung staghorn coral that fluoresce redder are less likely to settle and develop into coral polyps than their greener peers, University of Texas at Austin biologists have discovered.The finding may help scientists monitor how corals adapt to global warming because the less likely coral larvae are to settle, the more likely they will disperse from their reef of origin."By simply looking at the color of a larval...