Scientists Use Evolution To Breed ‘Super Corals’

Scientists have been using Darwin’s theory of evolution to speed up coral’s evolutionary clock to breed new ‘super corals’ that will be better suited to withstand the impact of global warming.

The Independent reports that the research has been conducted in Hawaii, where over half of the island state’s corals were lost to bleaching from 2014 to 2015, and now the team from the University of Hawaii is preparing to plant laboratory-raised corals into the ocean to see how they survive in nature.

The ‘super corals’ have been bred in a way that makes them more resistant to heat, but choosing corals with desirable traits and exposing them to increasing heat so they can acclimate to similar conditions in the wild.

Scientists have been observing corals that have survived bleaching for over a decade and choosing these hardy examples to breed the new super corals.

The experiment is based on Darwin's theory of evolution, which states all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

Crawford Drury, the chief scientist at Hawaii ´s Coral Resilience Lab, said: “Corals are threatened worldwide by a lot of stressors, but increasing temperatures are probably the most severe.

“And so that ´s what our focus is on, working with parents that are really thermally tolerant.”

Coral reefs provide food for marine animals and humans, shoreline protection for coastal communities, jobs for the local tourism economies, and even medicine that can treat conditions such as cancer, arthritis, dementia.

In the last decade, 14 per cent of the world’s corals have been lost, which experts have pinned on rising global temperatures. Scientists have been working tirelessly to help save the underwater creatures from extinction.

However, the latest method, using evolution, has left some critics saying that scientists are playing god.

Madeleine van Oppen of the Australian Institute of Marine Science said: “Well, you know, (humans) have already intervened with the reef for very long periods of time. All we’re trying to do is to repair the damage.”

Rather than by performing any unnatural techniques, such as altering the genes of the coral, the scientists are nudging the corals as to what could already happen in the ocean. Van Oppen said the teams were focussing on a local scale at first, to try and maintain and enhance what is already there.

Steve Palumbi, a marine biologist and professor at Stanford University, said there are many reasons why corals don’t bleach, and just because it hasn’t bleached in the field doesn’t mean it will be permanently heat tolerant.

Corals have been on Earth for about 250 million years and their genetic code is not fully understood, and Palumbi started that it is not the first time that corals on the planet have been exposed to high temperatures.

“So the fact that all corals are not heat resistant tells you ... that there’s some disadvantage to it. And if there weren't a disadvantage, they’d all be heat resistant,” he said.

However, he believes that the assisted evolution work has a valuable place in coral management plans, as coral reefs all around the world are in ‘desperate, desperate trouble.’

The project has gained broad support and spurred research around the world. Scientists in the UK, Saudi Arabia, Germany and elsewhere are doing their own coral resilience work. and the US government is also backing the effort.

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