Unity is strength in corals. And their secret is that they are chimeras. These are corals that have fused with another coral to form a single organ.
This phenomenon can occur quite naturally, when the right circumstances are met. This requires that two coral larvae find themselves close enough on the same reef to end up touching each other while growing and also that these two corals are compatible, as for a transplant patient with his organ donor, in this case, two corals can coalesce to become stronger coral, especially when the ocean or sea heats up.
The hope comes from the fact that researchers from Ifremer managed to recreate this phenomenon artificially by culturing larvae and deliberately bringing them closer together during growth.
There are permanent protective and adaptive mechanisms that can respond to the stresses caused by the merger of the two organisms. These corals are therefore much better prepared to face external aggressions explains Jérémie Vidal-Dupiol, researcher at theFrench research institute for the exploitation of the sea (Ifremer).
Merge to survive?
The #corals that merge as they grow side by side are more resistant to #Climate change !
Read more about the study published today in @biomedcentral https://t.co/dt8yNIjggP— Ifremer (@Ifremer_fr) July 26, 2022
To verify this, these scientists, who cultivated corals in the Mediterranean, and found that their survival rate was much better on average over one year: 70% survival in chimeras compared to only 43% in ordinary corals, and when we go up these corals closer to the surface, where the water is warmer, the chimeras also resist much better.
This ability to fuse appears to be shared by different species. For these researchers, it could even be a natural evolutionary path adopted by corals to cope with global warming. These scientists would like to fund larger-scale experiments to confirm this. The downside is that recreating this phenomenon artificially takes time, and corals don’t have much of it. 20% of the massifs have already definitively disappeared in the world. And 25% are currently threatened with destruction, yet these corals are home to around a third of the marine species known to date.