Heartbreaking Nature

Coral ‘synchronicity’ is interesting.

If you broke off a piece of Coral and put it in a bucket in, say, London, that chunk would in most cases spawn at exactly the same time as other coral of the same species around the world. Distance makes no difference. At least thats what i read in James Nestor’s’ book ‘Deep,’ a while back.

But the Coral’s weird communication skills are now messed up.

“This study is heartbreaking.”

What science study isnt heartbreaking these days.

====================================
Atlantic:https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/09/great-spawning-corals-becoming-undone/597466/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjer4BRCZARIsABK4QeViSqwT1mLte2XeUvCnvqyq8h3M4OzwI_Op7PvM36uMn9wujf-TKf8aAlmdEALw_wcB
Another Blow for the Future of Corals
Ed Yong

Tom Shlesinger knew what happens when corals have sex, but neither the books he had read nor the videos he had seen had prepared him for actually witnessing the event.

It happened on a summer night in 2015. Shlesinger had been snorkeling in the Gulf of Eilat for a few frustratingly uneventful hours when he saw a coral release small pink globules—packed with eggs and sperm. As these drifted upward, more globules emerged nearby. Within minutes, as if someone had flicked an unseen switch, thousands of corals had released their reproductive cells, which rose through the water in a kaleidoscopic blizzard. Small fish darted in to feast. Bigger fish arrived to eat the smaller fish. “It was a complete celebration of life,” says Shlesinger, who works at Tel Aviv University. “If I wasn’t floating in the sea, I would have fallen to my knees.”

Corals are tiny animals living within rocky fortresses of their own creation. Being immobile, most reproduce by simultaneously releasing millions of eggs and sperm, in the hope that a few will find one another amid the vast, diluting ocean. Those liberated cells are only good for a few hours, so timing is everything. If the corals are to make a new generation, they must spawn at the same time. They discern the right month by the temperature of the sea and the strength of the sun. They know the right night from the phase of the moon. The setting sun cues the right hour. Pheromones help them coordinate to the minute. The synchrony of this mass orgy is so precise that certain species spawn at the same predictable times every year, and likely have for eons.

Or, at least, they used to. “It’s all regulated by the environment,” Shlesinger says, “and when the environment is going through so much change, you’d expect that these processes will also change in response.”

Sure enough, Shlesinger and his colleague Yossi Loya have found that three common coral species in the Red Sea have lost their rhythm. Their timing is off; their unison is breaking. Rather than releasing a majestic unified blizzard of eggs and sperm at precise moments, they now spawn in pathetic, erratic drizzles across weeks and months. “It doesn’t look promising for those species,” Shlesinger says.

“This study is heartbreaking,” says Shayle Matsuda of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. “This is something we’ve all worried might be true.”….see link…