Some corals adjusting to rising ocean temperatures, Stanford researchers say
Research led by Stanford scientist Steve Palumbi reveals how some corals can quickly switch on or off certain genes in order to survive in warmer-than-average tidal waters.
To most people, 86-degree Fahrenheit water is pleasant for bathing and swimming. To most sea creatures, however, it’s deadly. As climate change heats up ocean temperatures, the future of species such as coral, which provides sustenance and livelihoods to a billion people, is threatened.
Through an innovative experiment, Stanford researchers led by biology Professor Steve Palumbi have shown that some corals can – on the fly – adjust their internal functions to tolerate hot water 50 times faster than they would adapt through evolutionary change alone. The findings, published April 24 in Science, open a new realm of possibility for understanding and conserving corals.
“The temperature of coral reefs is variable, so it stands to reason that corals should have some capacity to respond to different heat levels,” said Palumbi, director of Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “Our study shows they can, and it may help them in the future as the ocean warms.”
Coral reefs are crucial sources of fisheries, aquaculture and storm protection. Overfishing and pollution, along with heat and increased acidity brought on by climate change, have wiped out half of the world’s reef-building corals during the past 20 years. Even atemporary rise in temperature of a few degrees can kill corals across miles of reef.
American Samoa presents a unique case study in how corals might survive a world reshaped by climate change. Water temperatures in some shallow reefs there can reach 95 degrees Fahrenheit, enough to kill most corals. To find out how native corals survive the heat, researchers in Palumbi’s lab transplanted colonies from a warm pool to a nearby cool pool and vice versa.
The researchers found that, over time, cool-pool corals transplanted to the hot pool became more heat-tolerant. Although these corals were only about half as heat-tolerant as corals that had been living in the hot pool all along, they quickly achieved the same heat tolerance that could be expected from evolution over many generations. Corals, like people, have adaptive genes that can be turned on or off when external conditions change. The corals Palumbi’s group studied adjusted themselves by switching on or off certain genes, depending on the local temperature.
These findings make clear that some corals can stave off the effects of ocean warming through a double-decker combination of adaptation based on genetic makeup and physiological adjustment to local conditions.
“These results tell us that both nature and nurture play a role in deciding how heat-tolerant a coral colony is,” Palumbi said. “Nurture, the effect of environment, can change heat tolerance much more quickly – within the lifetime of one coral rather than over many generations.”
Palumbi cautioned that corals’ heat-adaptive characteristics do not provide a magic bullet to combat climate change. They can’t respond to indefinite temperature increases and they could be compromised by stressors such as acidification and pollution.
Still, if it holds true for most corals, this adaptive ability could provide a “cushion” for survival and might give coral reefs a few extra decades of fighting back the harsh effects of climate change, Palumbi said.
The Stanford Woods Institute has supported Steve Palumbi’s study of climate change impacts on coral reefs through its Environmental Venture Projects seed grant program. Read more about Palumbi’s research.
For more Stanford experts on the biosciences and other topics, visit Stanford Experts.
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Oh noeessssss. Are they now going to be called climate denying corals? Why get alarmists adapt out of existence this easy?
But it’s not April 1st, is it?
“Some corals adjusting to rising ocean temperatures, Stanford researchers “
Interesting, but…
do they also say that some corals do not/can not adjust to rising ocean temperatures?
Of course, this assumes that the ocean temperature is rising.
Do the Oceans have a feeever, too?
The ocean temperatures are not rising, sorry to be a buzzkill. Unadjusted ARGO data shows this.
Trenberth still cannot find his missing heat.
Anthozoa deniala
“As climate change heats up ocean temperatures”… Really? By how much? It’s a big ocean. Do the math on heating billions of cubic metres of water say one degree Celsius. More than a few Hiroshimas of energy would be required…and apparently that would still not kill the coral.
>>>have wiped out half of the world’s reef-building corals during the past 20 years.
Is this correct? Seems like a large fraction.
Sorry, by HOW much have surface waters warmed? Are we up to 0.1C yet? Poor little precious corals can apparently deal with 5C – not surprisingly, when temps change vastly more than that from summer to winter.
Here in Oz we have a very active coral alarmism industry, even though some of the reefs in question are 30 degrees south. It will be a looooooooong time before Lord Howe Is (closer to Sydney than Brisbane in latitude) has the climate of the Philippines. Yet magically the reef is being threatened despite living in oceans that have a million times the heat capacity of the atmosphere.
And then there’s the acid. Less “acid” than pure H2O, but somehow unbearable to these things.
This is why corals are still with us after over 500 million years. They have survived hot house Earth and glacial killers, the Yucatan impact and the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests. Just give them a little time, add salt and water and voila! It’s worse than we thought! We must act then!
Can I guess that those regenerated corals will produce some offspring more attuned to warmer water? If not then we really must act now and way back then.
Corals are a hardy group in our resilient Earth. Sponges too. These are well established organisms which have survived dramatic climate change time and time again – long before we came on the scene. Let us play another record.
As a SCUBA Instructor (hobby) I was diving around Thailand at the time of the last ‘Great Bleaching’ and saw the coral turn white and then gradually recover over the following couple of years. The bleaching was covered widely but the recovery not so much probably because it didn’t fit the meme.
As an empiricist (but also an IT professional) this confirms the study above using my own visual observations.
Gotcha! I have been told time and again by idiot commeters at the Guardian that the rate of ‘climate change’ was to fast for the corals. Now this!
You have been busted.
These people are idiots….they just discovered a tide change
If they would look in an inlet with a bay (shallow, hot) on one side, and deep ocean (cold) water on the other side….they would have “discovered” this twice a day
Found it got it read it…
They didn’t isolate or identify any gene…..it’s their WAG that it’s a gene
Temperature just dictates with dino (zoox) is going to dominate…..
This sound very like phrases I have been hearing over the years about all kinds of climate changes and effects such as “scientist are surprised”, “unexpected result”, “contrary to” etc. The reason they they are allegedly ‘surprised’ is because they never countenanced anything else. A little natural history should un-surprise them in future I hope.
Grrrrr.
This sound very like phrases……This sounds very much like phrases……
They state, “that some corals can – on the fly – adjust their internal functions to tolerate hot water 50 times faster than they would adapt through evolutionary change alone.” That assertion is ridiculous. The ability to change is bult in by its evolutionary heritage.
This coral has the ability adapt to changing environmental conditions *because of* evolution. That strongly implies that the current state of the climate, as well as its possible future, is not something out of bounds for these- and very likely most- life on Earth.
I thought global warming had paused for the last 17 years. But not in the ocean ??
It is typical that what is essentially good news has to be tempered to align with the consensus view of climate change/global warming/climate weirding. Coral in this experiment rapidly adapted to 95 degrees Fahrenheit water. Even if warming suddenly started following the IPCC’s script and the world rapidly warmed, most coral wouldn’t be exposed to water this warm. If these results can be attributed to other species and locations, a warming world won’t be catastrophic…but we read here that such adaptability is only a cushion for a few decades (a timeframe most humans can internalize), and they can’t respond to indefinite temperature increases.
Brrrrrr. Let’s not forget the other coral killer – COLD WATER. It’s UNPRECEDENTED and we must act now.
We have warm water corals and cold water corals. We have them deep and shallow too. I think they will be ok in the long run. We must act now to stop the freakin’ alarmism. I am sick of it.
so- if corals can acclimate quickly, why did half the world’s coral die off from minor temperature change? Are they all different corals- gotta know!
There are times when I wonder (and this is one of them) if Brian Aldiss was on to something when he wrote the Helliconia Trilogy and posited that the genetic history of a species, which is clearly encoded in its embryological development, permits an animal to undergo biological adjustment to cyclical environmental change.
Thank you hunter. Nice and correct.
Given the extremes in temperature over the past 12k years, it is a wonder there is any life on earth left!
Seems alarmists just do not think.
jglpitt@comcast.net says:
April 24, 2014 at 4:46 pm
I thought global warming had paused for the last 17 years. But not in the ocean ??
Globally, Hadsst3 is flat since November 2000 or 13 years and 5 months. See:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2000.8/plot/hadsst3gl/from:2000.8/trend