An international team comprising of marine biologists have warned that the existing diversity in some coral populations makes them even more susceptible to extreme temperature disturbances, such as those predicted due to global warming.
The team demonstrated that natural selection acting on the species of algae living within corals might determine which partnerships will survive when confronted with extreme temperatures changes.
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Scientists said that this delicate symbiosis is sensitive to changes in the environment, and especially to changes in temperature.
"A change in sea-surface temperature of just a few degrees above the summer high or below the winter low can cause many coral-algal symbioses to break down and the algae to be expelled," said Mark Warner, one of the team's leaders.
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The scientists found that corals harbouring certain species of symbiotic algae survived a severe cold-water event that took place in 2008 in the Gulf of California (eastern Pacific Ocean), while corals harbouring a different species of algae died.
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"In this region, Pocillopora corals typically harbor one of two types of symbiotic algae: a species that is sensitive to environmental changes or another species that is stress-tolerant," said a co-author of the study.
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On the other hand, Pocillopora colonies harbouring the stress-tolerant alga were virtually unaffected by the episode.
The team also surveyed reefs along the western coast of Mexico and into Panama.
Much like their work further north, the team noted that the majority of corals growing in these locations contained the more tolerant species of algae.
"The differential mortality that we witnessed suggests that the relationship between certain populations of Pocillopora and the species of algae they associate with is quite stable," said Warner.
"And this stability, ultimately, is an Achilles heel for Pocillopora. The inability of the corals to shuffle their symbionts or to establish symbioses with different species of algae means that we may see a significant loss of coral populations in the future, especially if extreme temperature disturbances, such as the cold anomaly we documented in 2008 or the hot anomaly that took place in 1997, become more frequent or severe," they added.
The results have been published in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Source-ANI
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