Despite previous research predicting coral species would move south to cooler waters to protect themselves, the new study – published in Molecular Ecology – has found this may not hold true on the West Coast of Australia.
Despite previous research predicting coral species would move south to cooler waters to protect themselves, the new study – published in Molecular Ecology – has found this may not hold true on the West Coast of Australia.
The new study, which investigated coral population connectivity and adaptive capacity, has found corals growing in different reef systems in north-western Australia are genetically isolated from each other.
The findings were based on the genetic data of a reef-building coral, Acropora digitifera, sampled from five well-known reef systems. The study sought to find out how connected these reef systems are, and how resilient this coral is to different future climate scenarios in different regions.
Lead researcher PhD student Arne Adam, from the Curtin School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said climate change had caused widespread loss of species biodiversity and ecosystem productivity across the globe, particularly on tropical coral reefs. He said the results suggest corals from northern reefs in WA are isolated from each other, meaning that corals may not be able to move to more southern reef regions.
Read more at: Curtin University
Photo Credit: Ipittman via Pixabay
