Vital ventilation

Stony corals use a refined built-in ventilation system to protect themselves from environmental stressors. Threatened beauty: Stony corals are particularly endangered by climate change. Thomas Heran A. Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research - Dying reefs and once-vibrant corals that have since lost all colour: climate change is having massive effects on the architects of undersea cities. As waters grow warmer, the phenomenon of "coral bleaching" continues to spread. Yet not all corals are equally susceptible. An international team led by Cesar Pacherres and Moritz Holtappels from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven and Soeren Ahmerkamp from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen may have found the explanation: using minuscule filaments (cilia), corals can influence the currents in their immediate vicinity, protecting themselves from harmful oxygen concentrations, as the experts report in the journal Current Biology. Coral reefs are not only one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on our planet; they are also among the most economically important ones.