[Coral-List] Corals upgrade algae to 'beat the heat'

[Thomas Moore]

i've just read the following article in the New Scientist magazine,
about how corals can 'upgrade their symbiotic algae so that they can
survive the bleaching that occurs in waters warming under climate
change'

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17182-corals-upgrade-algae-to-beat-the-heat.html

do you agree that this means that the corals are 'able to adapt to
their local conditions', as well as adapt to projected climate change?
looks like professor ove hoegh-guldberg doesn't agree:

http://www.climateshifts.org/?p=1705

'To somehow imply that coral reefs are not facing problems from
climate change because Oliver and Palumbi found a few tough coral
genotypes in a rock pool, verges on the incredible.'


I already posted this to ove hoegh-guldberg's site, but: how is
'swapped out' defined? i thought that 'exogenous acquisition' of
entirely 'new' symbionts was still to be proven? if so, this means
that the corals that don't contain 'heat sensitive' algae are
selectively weeded out under warming seas? what proportion of corals
contain 'heat sensitive' algae?



Santé,


Thomas


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Thomas Moore
thomasmooreis at gmail.com