Genetic Rescue Efforts Could Help Coral Shrug Off Warmer Oceans

The Washington Post reports that research published last week in the journal Science indicates that coral reefs may be less vulnerable to ocean temperature changes than has been widely believed, especially given human intervention. A slice: Some corals already have the genes needed to adapt to higher ocean temperatures, and researchers expect those genes will naturally migrate and mix with corals under stress over time ... And that process could potentially be sped up artificially. ... Giving coral evolution a boost isn't an entirely new concept. Some scientists have already suggested genetically modifying corals through artificial breeding, or doing the same for the tiny microbes that live inside corals and are essential to reef growth.

Comments

Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

You know those islands made out dead coral? Yeah... how did those get there? The thing is that coral is really really sensitive and dies really really easily. But its a species with a survival strategy more like bacteria then barn owls.

Yes, they die... they die easily and they die in huge numbers. But there are huge numbers of them to die. And while some die, some also survive. And this means that coral actually evolves very quickly. Any adaptation tends to not make it less death prone but the new strain of coral is happy in the new ocean conditions.

Change the temperate of the water? Coral dies.
Touch the coral? The coral dies.
Change the ocean chemistry in anyway? The coral dies.

Its super sensitive. But that's okay. Because while some coral dies some lives. And the coral that survives won't die to whatever killed their sires.

This is Tuesday for coral. Nothing new.

Does that mean we should f' up the coral and not care about damage we do the environment? Of course not... that's f'ing stupid. However, we also need to be less ignorant in the way we respond to issues.

I'm seeing people freak out about tress being cut down to make paper for example and the morons complaining about this tend to not realize that the trees being cut down were literally planted like we plant corn to produce paper/lumber trees.

Paper is as renewable a resource as cucumbers. We're not running out of either.

And the coral situation is analogous in that people are not grasping that the resiliency of coral is not in that it doesn't die but that it dies and adapts.

We have this big wide open beautiful world and it is full of many diverse species that all have different survival strategies. The strategies of ground squirrels are not going to be the same as the strategies of honey bees or the strategies of pine trees or the strategies of coral.

Its the 21st century, chaps. Stop freaking out like a bunch of fucking peasants.

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Attila Dimedici]

You really need to learn a bit more about how the real world works, because greenhouses do not use CO2 to capture heat. They use CO2 to stimulate plant growth. A greenhouse works because the translucent walls (whether glass, plastic, or some other material) allows light to pass through. When that light strikes an opaque surface some of it becomes heat. The walls do not readily allow that heat to escape.

As a matter of fact, CO2 does not work to capture heat in a greenhouse, there is just not enough room for CO2 to pay a significant role in capturing heat on the scale to which a greenhouse is built.

Re: Coral dies all the time

[Karmashock]

And yet it happened:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

Also this notion that peer review catches all frauds is laughable:
http://www.nature.com/news/pub...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

http://articles.mercola.com/si...

http://arstechnica.com/science...

http://www.the-scientist.com/?...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04...

As to your point about reading the abstracts. That's not enough. You need to actually have the study itself vetted. And peer review does not do that.

These studies are getting busted all the time for making things up or using really sloppy methodology that could be "interpreted" to mean anything... often transparently the author had a conclusion they wanted before even starting the study.

That isn't real science. That's what creationists do. You have to do your study with an open mind and accept whatever the study might say. No forming your theory before the data comes in and no shaping the data to fit your theory. It is FINE to have a hypothesis before you start the study. But it can't go beyond that until you've actually got the data in... and then you base the theory on the data... you do not shape the data to equal your hypothesis.

And that is frequently what is going on.