Source: The ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
August 24, 2010

Tiny corals face shocking losses when first they settle on reefs, making the full complexity and wonder of the mature coral reef all the more remarkable.

Research by Australian and French scientists has thrown new light on coral's dangerous infancy and childhood, in the quest to better understand how coral reefs can re-establish, at a time when they face multiplying threats worldwide.

A team from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) at James Cook University and CRIOBE, the French Research Centre and Observatory for Island Environments, used terracotta tiles to study and count survival in minute and juvenile corals on the Pacific island of Moorea, French Polynesia.

"The first thing we found is that the type and amount of coral larvae in the water very rarely bears any resemblance to the mature reef," Dr Lucie Penin of CoECRS and the University of Perpignan explains.

"What happens to the baby corals in the early stages of their life, up to the age of 4 or 5 years when they begin to reproduce, is clearly of great importance to the kinds of corals that dominate the reef."

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