Can coral reefs survive to global heating?

Coral species from Great Barrier Reef in Australia
Photo by Simone Marques

This is a paramount question to answer nowadays, in the next 20 to 30 years to future generations about healthy and survive of coral reefs. Coral reefs are the most import aquatic ecosystem of the world that maintain higher biodiversity and keep a lot of resources to humankind. In last 30 years many coral species have been suffer with the sped up of global climate change and the consequences of global heating. The global heating bias to cause the coral bleaching in many species of coral and have changing the symbiosis tolerance with the zooxantelas and corals. Many species also became vulnerable to diseases going to death and future colonization by algae. However, some studies have showed some hopes about the resistance of coral reefs to thermal stress. Some experiments with Acropora species have indicated acclimatization of the coral species to thermal stress suggesting a physiological plasticity of the host (corals) and symbiotic components (bacterias and zooxantelas) playing an important role in response to ocean warming. 

To know more about the tolerance and resistance of coral reefs to thermal stress click on links bellow and enjoy 2 recent papers published by Bellantuono et al 2012.

Coral Thermal Tolerance: Tuning Gene Expression toResist Thermal Stress

Resistance to thermal stress in corals without changes in symbiont composition