James Guest

New Coral Reef article alert ftom the Coralassist Lab!

rdcu.be/evbqK showing the dramatic effects of grazing pressure on early coral survivorship.

@newcastleuni.bsky.social
@erc.europa.eu

I got British citizenship via the five-year route. Labour’s new 10-year rule will cause untold pain | Nesrine Malik Starmer claims to want integration. Yet denying people safety, belonging and the right to vote for a decade amounts to the exact opposite, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

There are many lies told by politicians when it comes to immigration in the UK, but none is bigger than the claim that it’s all too easy: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Coral spawning muted in 2025 after mass coral bleaching in 2024 Once a year, on the fourth month, around four days after the fourth full moon of the year, our corals release eggs and sperm all at the same...

wildshores.blogspot.com/2025/05/cora...

My island of strangers: a poem | Michael Rosen

UK wins £500m in science grants from EU Horizon scheme after Brexit lockout

This blog really resonated with me describing the unseen work behind the papers that we publish: www.springernature.com/gp/researche...

Coral reef research in PLOS Climate - Latitude Coral reefs are among our planet’s most complex and biodiverse ecosystems and play vital roles in social-ecological systems, but they are also…

Explore some of the wide-ranging research on climate and coral reefs published in our journal 👇

latitude.plos.org/2025/03/cora...

Coral reef research in PLOS Climate - Latitude Coral reefs are among our planet’s most complex and biodiverse ecosystems and play vital roles in social-ecological systems, but they are also…

New on the Latitude blog: a round-up of some of the wide-ranging and interdisciplinary research and commentary on climate and coral reefs published in PLOS Climate.

latitude.plos.org/2025/03/cora...

**2 weeks** left to apply - come join me and @lec-reefs.bsky.social at Lancaster University.

Evaluating the role of moonlight-darkness dynamics as proximate spawning cues in an Acropora coral - Coral Reefs For sessile broadcast spawning marine invertebrates, such as corals, successful sexual reproduction depends on conspecifics spawning synchronously. The precise monthly, lunar, and diel timing and the ...

New paper alert! Congrats to Ruben de la Torre Cerro on publishing the first chapter of his PhD on how moonlight-darkness cycles affect spawning timing in an Acropora coral: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Higher spatial resolution is not always better: evaluating satellite-sensed sea surface temperature products for a west Pacific coral reef system - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Higher spatial resolution is not always better: evaluating satellite-sensed sea surface temperature products for a west Pacific coral reef system

RESEARCH: Higher spatial resolution is not always better: evaluating satellite-sensed #sea surface temperature products for a west Pacific #coral reef system. Coauthored by @simondonner.bsky.social r . www.nature.com/articles/s41... via @natureportfolio.bsky.social

Attention coral reef scientists...

Higher spatial resolution is not always better: evaluating satellite-sensed sea surface temperature products for a west Pacific coral reef system - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Higher spatial resolution is not always better: evaluating satellite-sensed sea surface temperature products for a west Pacific coral reef system

OK, I'm biased... but I'm a big fan of this new paper by @liamlachs.bsky.social, which emerged from his visit to UBC. The message: don't just grab the highest resolution data. You need to evaluate what is suitable for your specific location and research question.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🪸The Coral Reef Feed hopes to build a Bluesky community of scientists, students, managers, enthusiasts, communicators, artists, etc. that care about coral reefs and climate change

bsky.app/profile/did:...

Corals depend on near neighbours to reproduce A new study reveals corals must be within only a few metres of each other to successfully reproduce, leaving them vulnerable in a warming world.

Corals need to be close to their partners to reproduce, just a few meters. This has implications for bleaching event recovery which can leave individuals stranded, hampering reef re-population.

Story: www.uq.edu.au/news/article...
#coralreef #globalwarming #oceanhealth #biodiversity

Paper was led by Adriana Humanes, Liam Lachs & James Guest

Part of the fruitful Coralassist Lab - PICRC collaboration, with support from the Horniman Museum, Uni. Of Exeter, Derby Uni. & Uni. Victoria

Funded by ERC, with support from UKRI / NERC

(9/9)

Our study shows selective breeding is feasible, yet potential heat tolerance gains are modest compared to expected future warming.

R&D is needed to optimise breeding interventions and maximise positive impacts.

Ultimately, reefs still depend on rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

(8/9)

Offspring bred for short-stress tolerance did not show evidence of enhanced tolerance to the long-term stress that more closely emulates marine heatwaves.

To maximise coral fitness in the face of climate change, care will be needed when selecting which traits to breed for.

(7/9)

Nature vs. Nurture:

The heritability of heat tolerance traits was ~0.2-0.3.

This means these traits have a substantial genetic basis but are also heavily influenced by other non-genetic factors.

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Offspring whose parents had high (rather than low) heat tolerance showed an enhanced ability to withstand the type of heat stress for which they were bred.

They can withstand the heat stress for a longer duration before the onset of bleaching and mortality.

(5/9)

Then offspring were reared in an ocean nursery until they reached reproductive maturity themselves at 3-4 years old.

At this stage, the offspring were exposed to the same heat stress tests that were used years before to select their parents.

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Selective breeding was conducted for the bleaching survival response of wild corals to both:

- a short-term ~1-week +3.5 °C heat stress
- long-term ~1-month +2.5 °C heat stress

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Photo credit: Rob van Woesik

Marine heatwaves are triggering mass coral bleaching & mortality events.

Whether corals can adapt fast enough remains uncertain, leading to calls for assisted evolution.

Since 2017, the Coralassist Lab & PICRC Palau have been testing whether selective breeding is a feasible option.

(2/9)

📢New Paper Alert📢

Selective breeding enhances tolerance of corals to marine heatwaves

Take-home messages:

- Breeding corals for heat tolerance is feasible
- R&D is now needed to optimise outcomes
- Not a silver bullet solution
- We still need rapid climate action

bit.ly/4h0Tc0P

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Thanks to Amanda Bates for her thoughts on how the recent paper from my PhD at the Coralassist Lab (on the variability of coral heat tolerance among reefs) contributes to thermal biology and conservation more broadly.

doi.org/10.1016/j.tr...

credit: Liam Lachs

Thanks to all the other supportive groups & institutions helping fuel ideas in our field: PICRC AIMS, @newcastleuni.bsky.social Coralassist Lab, University of Queensland, @ubcoceans.bsky.social, Southern Cross Uni

(12/12)

credit: Liam Lachs

Thanks for supporting this work: @ukri.org NERC, ONEPlanet DTP, ERC Research, Mitacs Canada, @rgsibg.bsky.social @icrs.bsky.social IDEAWILD

& wonderful coauthors: YM Bozec, J Bythell, @simondonner.bsky.social, H East, AJ Edwards, Y Golbuu, M Gouezo, J Guest, A Humanes, C Riginos & P Mumby

(11/12)

credit: Liam Lachs

📢New Paper Alert📢

on corals and climate change in Science

Adaptation via natural selection could determine whether Acropora corals persist under expected levels of global warming

Hyperlinks & explainer thread below ⬇️

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Wednesday in Tulum:

James Guest at 11.30am on a 5- year selective breeding trial

& myself at 12.00pm on natural adaptation and importance of which trait we choose for breeding

Can we selectively breed Acropora corals for heat tolerance?

Two upcoming Coralassist Lab talks on adaptation & breeding @coralconsortium.bsky.social #ReefFutures

Feasibility & lessons learned from Pacific context building on our 2 new papers:

doi.org/10.1126/scie...

rdcu.be/d2RhM