Article by Connor Yeck

Plunge into the shallows off the Florida Keys, Hawaii or the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and you are likely to meet a startling sight.

Where there were once acres of dazzling coral - an underwater world of dayglo greens, brassy yellows and midnight blues - is now a ghostly landscape, with many reefs seemingly drained of their pigment.

Caused by stressful conditions like warming ocean temperatures, coral bleaching is a leading threat to some of our planet's most diverse and vital ecosystems.

Now, a team of researchers has found that some corals survive warming ocean temperatures by passing heat-resisting abilities on to their offspring.

Corals teach their offspring to beat the heat

The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, are the result of a collaboration between Michigan State University, Duke University and the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, or HIMB, at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa. This work, funded by the National Science Foundation and a Michigan State University Climate Change Research grant, is crucial in the race to better conserve and restore threatened reefs across the globe.

Coral reefs are habitats for nearly a quarter of all marine life, protecting coastlines from storms and erosion and supporting the livelihoods of millions of people around the world. Though still alive, bleached corals are at a much higher risk of disease, starvation and eventual mortality.

In their latest study, the team explored how resistance to thermal stress is passed down from parent to offspring in an important reef-building species known as rice coral. These findings are helping researchers breed stronger, heat-tolerant generations to better face environmental stress.

"The Coral Resilience Lab in Hawaii has developed amazing methods to breed and rear corals during natural summer spawning," said Spartan biochemist and study co-author Rob Quinn, whose lab takes samples of these corals and generates massive datasets on their biochemistry with instruments at MSU.

"This is a true scientific collaboration that can support coral breeding and reproduction to cultivate more resilient corals for the warming oceans of the future."

A colorful crowd

The kaleidoscopic of shades we associate with healthy coral is the product of a bustling exchange of resources between a coral animal and its algae partners.

When all is well, you might think of this relationship as that of tenants living in a home and paying a bit of rent.

In exchange for cozy, sheltered spaces found within the coral tissue as well as nutrients, algae use photosynthesis to produce sugars. These sugars can provide up to 95% of the energy that coral needs to grow and form the sprawling, breathtaking reefs we know.

In tropical waters often lacking nutrients, disruptions in this exchange - like those that occur during bleaching events - can be disastrous.

When looking at a specimen of coral that's suffered bleaching, you're glimpsing a coral that's "kicked out" its algae, leaving behind a pale skeleton.

"Corals are like the trees in an old growth forest; they build the ecosystems we know as reefs on the energetic foundation between the animal and algae," explained Crawford Drury, an assistant researcher at the Coral Resilience Lab at HIMB and co-author of the study.

In the waters of Kaneohe Bay, the Coral Resilience Lab is spearheading research to best understand this coral reef ecology and the molecular mechanisms driving thermal stress.

The lab is likewise pioneering the breeding of thermally resistant coral for experiments and the restoration of reefs, a highly specialized process few labs in the world can achieve.

So, while you'd usually be hard pressed to find fresh coral for study in East Lansing, MSU's partnership with the Coral Resilience Lab has led to a globe-spanning collaboration that closes the gap between field and laboratory.

"HIMB and MSU have developed a really amazing partnership. I'm just happy they've let me be a ...