Coral

Question 1

Stone 2007

Answer 1

largest living system

Question 2

Li et al 2022

Answer 2

“Rainforest of the Sea”, home to >1/4 marine life, coral microbiome engineering = precise and controlled manipulation of microbiome (algae, bacteria, fungi) to enhance resilience and tolerance to changing oceans, mb eng is a mature science in other fields e.g. human health and agro, restructuring microbial symbionts = new traits = host flexibility (active restoration)

Question 3

Stone et al 1999

Answer 3

major bleaching events in sync with El Nino events that occur every 3-4 years, intervals between bleaching = too short to allow full assemblage recovery

Question 4

Baker et al 2008

Answer 4

bleaching likely to become a chronic stress in many reefs, climate change = principal threat

Question 5

Baskett and Nisbet 2009

Answer 5

cc may be too rapid for corals to naturally select, models with no variation in thermal tolerance predicted reef collapse in decades, models with variation predict persistence into next century (provided low enough gg emissions)

Question 6

Shi 2021

Answer 6

Degraded reef = higher ocean acidification = dissolved CACO3 skeletons = release of CO2, also will switch from auto to hetero under stress, so more respiration than photo -> overall switch from net sink to net source of C