Science & technology | Reef-building

Some corals are better at handling the heat

Scientists are helping them breed

 At Australian Institute of Marine Science, scientist are trying to breed corals.
Seeding is believingPhotograph: Getty Images
|Townsville

CORAL REEFS, home to about a quarter of all known marine species, face an existential threat. Rising water temperatures cause the corals to expel their resident photosynthetic algae, bleaching them white and depriving them of their major food source.

The Economist today

Handpicked stories, in your inbox

A daily newsletter with the best of our journalism

More from Science & technology

How to reduce the risk of developing dementia

A healthy lifestyle can prevent or delay almost half of cases

GPT, Claude, Llama? How to tell which AI model is best

Beware model-makers marking their own homework


How America built an AI tool to predict Taliban attacks

“Raven Sentry” was a successful experiment in open-source intelligence


Gene-editing drugs are moving from lab to clinic at lightning speed

The promising treatments still face technical and economic hurdles, though

How Ukraine’s new tech foils Russian aerial attacks

It is pioneering acoustic detection, with surprising success

The deep sea is home to “dark oxygen”

Nodules on the seabed, rather than photosynthesis, are the source of the gas