Climate change and the biosphere
Slideshow: Climate change and corals
Hot Papers: Climate change and frog deaths
In the summer of 1983, hundreds of square meters of graceful elkhorn coral on the floor of the Caribbean Sea began collapsing from disease and became overrun by a green carpet of algae. Within a few years, only rubble remained. "It wiped out most of the population of the Acropora," which are elkhorn and staghorn, says Ernesto Weil, a professor of coral reef biology and ecology at the University of Puerto Rico. Weil has been working with coral reefs in the Caribbean for 30 years.
Coral disease is a tricky problem to solve. "You can't quarantine it, can't cull it, you can't vaccinate the host," says Drew Harvell, ...
