Research shows that genetic diversity can help corals adapt to rising ocean temperatures.
Dive into How Coral Adaptation Works and Why It Matters for Reef Survival
Learn exactly how coral adaptation helps reefs survive warming oceans. Discover why connectivity, genetics, and local conditions are key to long-term reef resilience.
The Challenge
Corals are threatened by climate change, in addition to overfishing, land-based pollution, and other stressors.
Almost half the world’s reefs have been lost since 1950 and all those remaining are projected to be threatened by 2050 if the conditions and trends continue. The humanitarian and biodiversity consequences of total coral reef collapse would be catastrophic, impacting more than a million marine species, local economies, and food security for countless coastal communities.
Collectively, we need to dramatically reduce global emissions. But what else can we do to ensure coral reefs stay healthy and continue to provide benefits to wildlife and people?
Our Solution
Our research shows the diversity of corals in strategic locations can help coral reefs adapt to and recover from the effects of climate change.
Introducing the Roadmap to Reef Resilience.
Starting with the Mesoamerican Reef, this collaborative effort between CORAL, the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative (HRHP), the Mesoamerican Reef Fund (MAR Fund), and the University of Leeds identifies where conservation action can most effectively strengthen reef resilience. By analyzing the latest data and engaging key partners from Mexico to Honduras, the project will deliver climate-smart Action Plans and financing strategies to support priority reef sites.
To guide these decisions, we are developing a high-resolution scientific map of reef resilience across the entire Mesoamerican Reef. This effort combines data from more than 300 reef survey sites, 20 years of ecological monitoring, satellite environmental data, water quality records from 90 locations, and predictive models. By examining how reefs have responded to past environmental stress, we can identify reefs at higher risk and those with stronger capacity to tolerate future bleaching and climate impacts.
We then translate this science into action by working with more than 100 shareholders to co-develop climate-smart management strategies tailored to local conditions. In parallel, partners are identifying philanthropic and private financing opportunities to support conservation at both site and regional scales. Together, these efforts create a practical roadmap for prioritizing protection, directing resources, and strengthening resilience across the Mesoamerican Reef.
Designing Conservation for Adaptation
If you are a conservation practitioner, marine spatial planner, or have input on marine spatial planning processes, we highly recommend that you take the following steps. There is hope for coral reefs but only if we support the conditions that allow them to adapt.
Prioritize the protection of diverse networks of reefs
Make decisions from a thermal perspective. Corals that can survive on warmer, degraded reefs may provide key sources of heat-tolerant larvae!
Follow existing best practices
Do this by effectively protecting large and well-connected reef areas.
Manage local stressors
Continue to manage local stressors, especially land-based sewage pollution, to maximize the chances of coral reef survival and adaptation.
Coral conservation in a warming world must harness evolutionary adaptation
To facilitate evolutionary adaptation to climate change, we must protect networks of coral reefs that span a range of environmental conditions — not just apparent ‘refugia’.… Continue Reading →
Assessing the potential for demographic restoration and assisted evolution to build climate resilience in coral reefs
Interest is growing in developing conservation strategies to restore and maintain coral reef ecosystems in the face of mounting anthropogenic stressors, particularly climate warming and associated mass bleaching events…… Continue Reading →
Whitepaper: Forecasting Climate Sanctuaries for Securing the Future of Coral Reefs
We highlight the environmental and biological factors that predict the ongoing climate impactsof coral reefs, and explore the potential for adaptation, acclimation and stress tolerance of coral reefs.… Continue Reading →
Evolution and connectivity influence the persistence and recovery of coral reefs under climate change in the Caribbean, Southwest Pacific, and Coral Triangle
Here, we used eco-evolutionary simulations to examine coral adaptation to warming across reef networks in the Caribbean, the Southwest Pacific, and the Coral Triangle. We found that evolution can be critical in preventing extinction and facilitating the long-term recovery of coral communities in all regions.
Quantifying global potential for coral evolutionary response to climate change
Using a global ecological and evolutionary model of competing branching and mounding coral morphotypes, this study shows symbiont shuffling was more effective than symbiont evolution in delaying coral-cover declines, but stronger warming rates outpace the ability of these adaptive processes and limit coral persistence.
Management for network diversity speeds evolutionary adaptation to climate change
This pioneering study is one of the first to demonstrate that management that takes evolution and adaptation into account can help rescue coral reefs from climate change. The results show that smart decisions to protect reefs today lead to the conditions that can help corals adapt to rising temperatures.
Who Should Pick the Winners of Climate Change?
(Webster et al. 2017) Conservation strategies that focus on predicted winners risk undervaluing the balance of biological diversity from which climate change winners could otherwise emerge. Drawing on ecology, evolutionary biology, and portfolio theory, we propose a conservation approach designed to promote adaptation that is less dependent on uncertain predictions.