Plunge into the shallows off the Florida Keys, Hawaiʻi 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, demonstrating the significance of new findings regarding corals passing down thermal resistance to their offspring.

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.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, are the result of a collaboration between Michigan State University, Duke University and the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology, or HIMB, at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. 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 Hawaiʻi 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, demonstrating the implications of these findings about rice corals passing down thermal resistance.

“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.”

Read the full article about corals' thermal resistance by Connor Yeck at MSUToday.