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Climate change and
impact
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Recovery
through connectivity
An important factor for coral reef resilience is the
connectivity between and within coral reefs. Larval-exporting or
source reefs with diverse populations of healthy adult corals are
essential for maintaining the genetic diversity and resilience of
larval-importing or sink reefs.
Therefore, assessing the extent to which reefs are
self-seeding or accumulate recruits from surrounding areas, as
well as the direction of larval dispersal, will improve our
ability to forecast how reef corals are likely to respond to
environmental change.
Successful migrants leave a genetic signature of their
movements and allow inference of connectivity using population
genetic methods. AIMS scientists are using genetic methods to
identify potential migrants that have settled on a reef over the
past few generations.
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November 7, 2007
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