Topic
The study of coral reef ecosystems: how corals, fish, microbes and other organisms interact and respond to disturbance, nutrients and human impact.
A Lancaster-led study finds reefs around rat-free atolls grow 1.8 to 2.5 times faster than those around rat-infested islands. The comparison is across islands and the rates are calculated potentials, so it says little about one island's recovery after eradication.
Reality
Researchers report that three drowned peat reefs off Mozambique, with peat up to 5,000 years old, host marine life comparable to a nearby coral reef. The paper says the peat's present-day carbon role is unresolved, and three sites in one archipelago cannot show how many such reefs exist.
Reality
Scientists at OIST, CNRS and Indiana University School of Medicine linked 585 liver genes in adult blue damselfish to urbanisation across 18 Okinawan sites. Urban fish looked well fed by their gene activity yet showed stronger immune and inflammatory signals.
Reality
Cornell's WildFin team found standard vision models still misread fish behavior after tuning on nine hours of reef video that took about 2,000 hours to make. The team blames scarce wildlife footage in model training and is asking ecologists to release their field video, a remedy this study has not yet tested.
Reality
ZMT and ICBM researchers rebuilt 70 bacterial genomes from fish-gill DNA once treated as contamination, and the most widespread carry chemosynthesis genes. The study reads gene content only, so whether the microbes fix carbon or help the fish is untested.
Reality
A University of Sydney survey of coral feeding scars on the Great Barrier Reef found crown-of-thorns starfish moving on before a colony died, with regrowth concentrated in the slow-growing corals Montipora and Porites.
Reality