Resilience is the ability of organisms to recover from disturbances. Research at AIMS is investigating the potential for reef corals to recover after bleaching events and the ability of coral to acclimatise or adapt to increases in water temperature in the longer term.

After a catastrophic bleaching event, where a significant proportion of the coral has died, a reef will recover primarily by recruiting new coral from surrounding reefs. Genetic analysis of coral populations, together with the study of sea currents (hydrodynamic models), allows AIMS scientists to find work out where new recruits came from, enabling them to identify source and sink reefs.

Researchers at AIMS are also using genetic tools to better understand how corals will acclimatise to further temperature increases through association with heat-resistant strains of zooxanthellae, the symbiotic partners of corals.

In the long-term, if there is no abatement in climate change, corals will need to evolve or they will die out. Investigation of the genetic basis for variation in bleaching tolerance within coral populations will allow AIMS scientists to predict how coral will respond to the pressure of selection.
 

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