Essay by Eric Worrall
Following the embarrassment of record coral abundance in their endangered reefs, Aussie academics now claim their reefs are suffering “cryptic” diversity loss.
Coral reefs: How climate change threatens the hidden diversity of marine ecosystems
Published: August 24, 2023 7.22am AEST
Samuel Starko Forrest Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia
Julia K. Baum Professor of Biology, University of Victoria…
As climate change pushes corals beyond their limits, a key question is why different corals vary in their sensitivity to warm waters.
…
Using genomic tools, we identified three distinct types of Porites lobata on Kiritimati. These lineages, which may represent distinct species, are indistinguishable by eye but genetically different.
Such biodiversity is known as “cryptic diversity” or “hidden diversity.” Although cryptic diversity is widespread across corals, its ecological implications remain unclear.
Marine heat waves threaten cryptic diversity
We found that one genetic lineage of Porites was highly sensitive to the heat wave: only 15 per cent of its colonies survived compared to 50-60 per cent in the other lineages. Thus, even in a coral widely considered to be stress tolerant, heat waves can have hidden impacts, threatening diversity that is invisible to the naked eye.
…
Because interbreeding between cryptic lineages and species can offer a potential avenue for future adaptation, losses of genetic diversity could make a bad problem even worse by limiting future adaptation to changing environments.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/coral-reefs-how-climate-change-threatens-the-hidden-diversity-of-marine-ecosystems-211007
The abstract of the study;
Marine heatwaves threaten cryptic coral diversity and erode associations among coevolving partners
SAMUEL STARKO HTTPS://ORCID.ORG/0000-0002-9604-9188 , JAMES E. FIFER, DANIELLE C. CLAAR HTTPS://ORCID.ORG/0000-0003-2389-111X, SARAH W. DAVIES HTTPS://ORCID.ORG/0000-0002-1620-2278, ROSS CUNNING HTTPS://ORCID.ORG/0000-0001-7241-1181, ANDREW C. BAKER HTTPS://ORCID.ORG/0000-0002-7866-2587, AND JULIA K. BAUM HTTPS://ORCID.ORG/0000-0002-9827-1612 Authors Info & Affiliations
SCIENCE ADVANCES
11 Aug 2023
Vol 9, Issue 32Abstract
Climate change–amplified marine heatwaves can drive extensive mortality in foundation species. However, a paucity of longitudinal genomic datasets has impeded understanding of how these rapid selection events alter cryptic genetic structure. Heatwave impacts may be exacerbated in species that engage in obligate symbioses, where the genetics of multiple coevolving taxa may be affected. Here, we tracked the symbiotic associations of reef-building corals for 6 years through a prolonged heatwave, including known survivorship for 79 of 315 colonies. Coral genetics strongly predicted survival of the ubiquitous coral, Porites (massive growth form), with variable survival (15 to 61%) across three morphologically indistinguishable—but genetically distinct—lineages. The heatwave also disrupted strong associations between these coral lineages and their algal symbionts (family Symbiodiniaceae), with symbiotic turnover in some colonies, resulting in reduced specificity across lineages. These results highlight how heatwaves can threaten cryptic genotypes and decouple otherwise tightly coevolved relationships between hosts and symbionts.
Read more: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf0954
The researchers are suggesting heatwaves are killing corals and symbionts which don’t have heat stress genes, potentially leading to loss of the genetic diversity vital to the future survival of the coral.
In my opinion, the paleo evidence does not support the assertion that observed temporary shifts in genetic abundance are any kind of threat to the world’s coral reefs.
Corals are one of the most ridiculously resilient organisms on the planet. They sailed straight through the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event which killed the dinosaurs. Although adult corals are immobile, coral colonies regularly spawn countless microscopic and highly mobile larvae, through sexual reproduction, which seek out and colonise new sites. No doubt many of those larvae contain mutations or novel genetic combinations, which sometimes assist the larvae in colonising new sites.
Coral’s shield against adversity is their immense genetic diversity, and the mobility of their spawn – neither of which is threatened by temporary shifts in the relative abundance of different genetic alleles.
Just taking a page from “The Heat Is Hiding In the Ocean Depths” Scientologists.
There’s a dying tree in that forest; an ugly girl in that sorority; a genius in congress.
“a genius in congress.”
I suspect that comes in the “highly unlikely” category !
There might be a couple, P. T. Barnum types.
a good argument on skeptic blogs
Another totally empty comment by moosh !
Big deal. Scientific navel gazing on steroids!
So any local change is a bad thing, even though there is no visible difference?
It amazes me how quick they are to want to spread bad news and bring people down.
That’s what death cults do.
Come on Walter, they are in the ecology business. Their careers are built on bad news; the real purpose of ecological studies is to investigate the effects of human activity (including allegedly human-caused global warming) on the natural environment. Of which the fundamental precept is that all human activity must have negative effects on species survival/biodiversity etc.* Because that’s where the (grant) money is. Good news, even neutral news, does not exist in their world.
Two of the authors are at the University of Victoria, that bastion of academic freedom and intellectual integrity, which fired our own, highly esteemed and monumentally courageous Dr. Susan Crockford for pointing out that polar bear populations are healthy and not declining. Good news gets you the pink slip. Welcome to the twenty-first century, where the truth comes to die.
I’ve previously observed here that corals are like weeds – you can try to eradicate them any way you like (cyclones, silt, fresh water increase, increased sunlight, increased temperatures, gelignite, tourists, starfish, dodgy die-off studies, etc etc), but in time they come back just as profligate as when they “disappeared”.
Even total obliteration of the Bikini Atoll coral reefs by atomic bomb tests in the 1950s didn’t prevent the corals growing back to their previous state within just 60 years.
And for the same reasons. Corals and weeds are both fast growing, prolific, and tolerant of poor environmental conditions. Bikini Atoll is probably now developing some interesting new coral mutation variants.
Are these scientists really green? Do they eat spirulina which is a blue-green algae? They should try a smoothie that includes this food.
There are fairies at the bottom of the garden, too. Maybe they can’t be seen because they are being affected adversely by climate change.
There are fairies at the bottom of the garden..
And a few kangaroos loose in the top paddock !
And a few sandwiches short for a picnic. !
Would argue with a sign post !
Kind of reminds me of the odd troll or two who frequent this site.
An awful number of authors to discover nothing.
But think of the academic resumes polished.
What is the saying.. you can add glitter, but you can’t polish a t**d. !
“losses of genetic diversity”? no mention of what might have been lost since the ice ages. Have they forgotten all life is subject to change, it’s called evolution, not cloning, and possibly creates greater genetic diversity.
Think about ‘cryptic diversity’ from a Darwinian evolution perspective. First it accumulates in a species, here a Porites coral (of which there are already many species, as Porities is a genus of massive stony corals). Then natural selection occurs, and cryotic diversity strongly diminishes as speciation occurs via survival of the fittest alleles under changing environmental conditions. Then it accumulates again, now in two species… repeat ad infinitum.
And this is somehow BAD? It is how Nature works.
Yes Nature is always looking to replace present versions of species with more adapted later versions.
And offering up sacrifices of “superfluous” creatures, (such as the WEF et al envision) doesn’t buy any indulgences or exceptions from Gaia.
So take note Klaus – you could well be one of the “superfluous”.
Do thee scientists really believe in Intelligent Design?
In similar news, “Nessie hunters hear sounds but fail to record them”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-66633215
A little quick fact research.
We know from paleontology and geology that the ancestors to modern corals evolved during the Cambrian Explosion about 510 million years ago. Cnidarians have been around for a very long time, surviving all five major past extinctions, unlike the also Cambrian emerged trilobites.
‘Modern’ corals go back in the sedimentary geological record at least 30 million years.
We should worry now because of loss of cryptic diversity?
Not sure, the original “corals” may have been nailed by the Permian–Triassic extinction event?
I have several Petoskey stones from Michigan, which are ~350 million years old fossilized coral. I imagine they are found on the other side of the lake.
https://www.michiganrvandcampgrounds.org/petoskey-stone-beaches/
Drag a $100 bill through a university science lab and see what pops out.
[The whole Clintonista saga gave us many new windows into the darker side of politics. The Big Guy 10% Joe “Biden Brand” Brandon aka Robert L. Peters aka Robert Ware aka JRB Ware is building whole new glass houses. Much more and we’ll run out of sand or I’ll get tired of adding more corruption identifiers.]
“These lineages, which may represent distinct species, are indistinguishable by eye but genetically different.”
I’m no scientist, but can’t that be said about any two humans? Pygmies, Kenyans, and Eskimos are distinguishable by eye and genetically different, but no one would suggest they aren’t all homo sapiens. It’s straining at a gnat to try to make identical corals into different species just to flog an agenda—and besides, at least in the excerpts reproduced above, they don’t specify how much genetic variation they’re supposedly looking at, nor explain why that doesn’t fall within the normal variation within a species.
The thing that amazes me about corals resilience, is the fact the oceans were 130 meters lower that today during the last ice age. Only 20,000 years ago. Yet the Great Barrier Reef today is the worlds largest living organism.
Corals will still be in existence long after humans are gone.
The lower sea levels meant the oceans were very much saltier than they are now, and yet the corals and fish survived.
> Aussie academics now claim their reefs are suffering “cryptic” diversity loss.
Not their reefs. There’s no fun in that.
> we identified three distinct types of Porites lobata on Kiritimati
I wonder what prompted them to go searching for invisible genetic differences in a species of coral in a small group of exotic tropical islands that are nearly 10 thousand kilometers away. It would be interesting to see what their stated purpose was according to their grant proposal. 🙂
I was going to question Kiritimati, but checked comments first.
Two answers:
Having visited the GBR, they thought a trip to an exotic location would be nice.
When gloom and doom at home fails, try something different.
Are there fewer tourists to be annoyed at visiting Kiritimati?
There’s fewer everything in Kiribati. Kiritimati is a wildlife sanctuary part of the Republic of Kiribati and, like Bikini Atoll, was used for nuclear testing. Getting permission to visit this fairly remote island isn’t straightforward so no tourists and who’s going to take the trouble to go there and double check their findings?
“The warming will decrease the diversity ”
Go look to the north, the coral triangle is much warmer and has the most coral diversity on the planet
Enough said do these loons think we are stupid
Doesn’t the overall evidence suggests the odds are in their favor to make such an assumption?
you mean the stupid bit I assume
maybe some people but not all of us
That’s an easy question, Yes.
Change happens. For many different reasons.
And coral lives or coral dies. Some coral suffers and some coral thrives.
That which thrives has more success. That which suffers, less so.
These researchers have made a key breakthrough in biology.
They’ve discovered natural selection.
For sure. Climate alarmists don’t seem to like natural selection and evolution, every extinction is a tragedy…
every “change”
Not a tragedy, an opportunity not to be wasted.
They are losing and they know it.
Ahhh . . . the ol’ you’re-dead-but-just-have-realized-that-fact-yet excuse.
When that’s all you’ve got left, why not . . .
Ooops . . . first sentence should read “. . . you’re-dead-but-just-haven’t-realized-that-fact-yet excuse.”
It is all caused by increasing Absorbed Solar Radiation(sunlight) resulting from changes in cloud cover.
Head waves, coral bleaching, global warming are all caused increasing sunlight caused by changes in cloud cover not long wave radiation from CO2.
There are 2 data sets measuring the Net Top of Atmosphere radiation.
These are CERES NASA and Yhang and Rossow (NASA GISS scientists). Combined these data sets shows that the planet has been warm because of Absorbed Solar Radion atleased from 1983 if not longer.
Also Yhang and Rossow’s paper disputes that Earth’s Energy Imbalance has been increasing this century. They say that the planet is losing a lot more long wave radiation into space than CERES claims.
Yhang and Rossow’s 2023 paper can be found in Publications on CERES website.
Bleaching mostly occurs when there is an El Nino causing lower water levels on the GBR…
.. hence exposing more coral to that extra sunlight.
Hello NeilMcL
Do tout have the link of that study from Yhang and Rossow ? Thé conclusions seems to bé awesome.
I would like to read it, and then maybe make an article about it on our french website “Climat et Vérité”.
Thanks
There were faults in my previous post due to my keyboard, and I cannot edit because of flood protection on this sit (WordPress).
Hello NeilMcL
Do tout have the link of that study from Yhang and Rossow ? The conclusions seems to be awesome.
I would like to read it, and then maybe make an article about it on our french website “Climat et Vérité”.
Thanks
Are you talking about this study ?
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022JD037340
There’s a money quote in this bogus report about things that are not visible. It is “…future adaption…”. If Darwin read this he would get the giggles.
Were there any corals which grew faster or more abundantly in the warm water? Did they look?
If you go out into the ocean where there is nobody else around and experience cryptic diversity loss, did it really happen?
I’m still waiting to see this cross-word puzzle !
Seems to be an argument akin to the claim that the Monarch butterfly has various ‘subspecies’ based on their geographic location and whether or not they migrate.
The Monarch is the same species everywhere it exists on Earth, and whether or not they migrate is due to low temperatures and lack of food plants for foliage for the caterpillars and nectar for the butterflies.
We have entered the era of faux science, or Climate Alarm pseudo Science to give it its official name.
The past period of scientific inspired civilisation and evolution, has led to a quadrupling of the world population in the past 100 years. That is how damaging this past industrial era has been. On top of this unprecedented uplift in technology leading to human population increase and improvement to health of the people. The wealth of the people plus comfort of the people has also improved. The uplift in human life’s positivity, has also allowed whale populations to be taken off the endangered list, as no longer hunted for their fats and meat. Polar Bears have been taken off the extinction at risk list. along with many of the previously hunted to virtual extinction large mammals.
Record harvests have been recorded most years in the past thirty across the globe. That food uplift along with an increase in bio habitat equal to an area twice the size of the USA, tells a powerful story. With all that positivity, would it be unreasonable to conclude we are living in positive times? Clearly according to Alarmists the answer is yes.
That kind of simplistic reflection must not be allowed to gain traction in the public space. To avoid that, we have also spawned the new inverse thinking human, a sub species called the Eco Lune. This new evolving specie can be seen on mainstream broadcasting and increasingly in political theatre across the Western World. The more aggressive members of the sub species of Homo UN-pious, are now sticking themselves to roads throwing food over paintings and walking slowly along main highways. They are confident the more numerous and generally peaceful Homo Sapiens will not harm them. The fully evolved Homo Sapiens have a proud history of tolerating the simple minded members in society, supporting them where possible. Always hoping an improvement to the mental weakness being suffered can be eased. The latest Eco Lune/UN-pious species is testing the good will of Homo Sapiens to the limit. We must be careful a mass extinction does not take place, as so often happens when a flawed side branch of natural evolution emerges….momentarily.
We’re having a scientific climate optimum and a political climate crisis!
Just what we need. Cryptology the burgeoning new branch of climastrology with more disciples of the dooming that brooks no crypticism from the unenlightened masses.
You may not be interested in cryptic diversity, but cryptic diversity is interested in you.
its just australia, let the damn reef die already
Erm it’s not Australia, Mosh – Kiritimati isn’t even in the same hemisphere as Australia.
Except its growing very well. Near record coral and coverage.
Poor moosh, always the ignorant one.
You know the busybody ecofreak doomsters just can’t help themselves Mosher-
Scientists are intentionally bleaching and ‘cryopreserving’ coral (msn.com)
The irony of burning fossil fuels for all that ‘noble cause’ make work programs is completely lost on them.
Creating imaginary subspecies is a great way to get that extinction rate up to alarmist-approved levels.
How do they get away with publishing such drivel?
Because I have an interest in sea surface temperature (https://www.bomwatch.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/GBR_SST-study_Aug05.pdf), I thought the paper may have contained some up-to-date SST data. But it doesn’t.
I tracked some of the supporting citations, and ditto, or should I say zippo, zilch. The warming proposition is actually based on NOAA satellite data and further back I came across a study by one of the Authors (Danielle C. Claar) who undertook a very crude correlation study in which she claimed high-level (1:1) linear correlation between 5-years of observed data vs the same 5-years of NOAA nighttime SST data for grid-cells covering Kiritimati. Then, having established that, based on hind-sight to 1985, the collection of papers enthusiastically declared that “Transformation of coral communities subjected to an unprecedented heatwave is modulated by local disturbance” (Baum et al., Sci. Adv. 9, eabq5615 (2023) 5 April 2023). This paper then backgrounds “how heatwaves can threaten cryptic genotypes and decouple otherwise tightly coevolved relationships between hosts and symbionts”.
Sounds like a nitpick; however, raw correlation (Pearsons) as well as linear regression presume data are free of a common factor that imparts autocorrelation – the prediction of one value within each dataset, by another factor common to both. The common factor in this case is the annual cycle.
As SST is low in winter and warm in summer, datasets move up and down in unison, which grossly inflates correlation of one series with the other. While I don’t have the data, if the cycle were removed there would be no correlation, and their foundation argument would fall apart. They say (on P2) “the coral atoll Kiritimati experienced some of the highest levels of accumulated heat stress ever documented on a coral reef, rivalled only by nearby Jarvis Island during this same time period (49)”. Ref 49 is the Baum et al paper mentioned above.
Cheers,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
Some mysterious phenomenon…
Where are Dana Scully and Fox Mulder when you need them?