Using advanced technology to understand natural reef resilience, and boost it.
Using advanced technology to understand natural reef resilience, and boost it.
With much of the world’s coral turning a ghostly white, UC Riverside scientists have launched a $1.1 million project to uncover how reefs regain life-giving algae after suffering from heat stress.
Bleaching occurs when stressed corals lose the algae living in their tissues. Without them, coral turns pale and begins to starve. If algae don’t return within a few weeks, the sickly coral dies, leaving behind a white skeleton that can no longer support the marine life that once depended on it.
“Many corals depend on their algal partners for survival, but we still know very little about how these relationships recover once disrupted,” said project leader and UCR assistant bioengineering professor Tingting Xiang.
Read More: University of California - Riverside
Image: Fluorescence image of Acropora juvenile polyp showing symbiotic algae (red) within host tissue and host autofluorescence (green). (Credit: Tingting Xiang/UCR)
