Salt and Sugars May Help Overheating Corals

Abstract

You may have heard that coral reefs are overheating and are vanishing from our planet. Although this is certainly the case, the news is not all grim and gloomy! Every so often, surprising experiments show us that there is still hope for corals and much more to learn from them. Working along the Red Sea coast, we were surprised to find that corals living in very salty water seemed to be stronger during overheating periods. Moreover, we also found a link between the saltiness of water and the ability of anemones (the close cousins of corals) to deal with heat. In this article, we will explore this relationship by zooming into anemone cells to measure molecules invisible to the naked eye—all with the aim of figuring out how salt can make anemones and corals stronger in the face of increasing temperatures.